Tu Salus Fidelium
by Petit Parapluie
Summary: A tentative first attempt:The Court of Jerusalem, raddled with intrigue and tainted with secrets, as seen through the eyes of a reluctant pilgrim.Possibly AU as it develops.
1. Chapter 1

The sun is different in the far countries; the ones that border the very edge of the world. Or so it seems; surely Palestine _must_ be on the very edge of the world, since it lies beyond the Middle Sea on the cusp of unknowingness, a place hovering somewhere between Avalon and the great, azure city of Paradise itself. Any pilgrim who ventures from their cold, wet island of Christendom across the jigsaw puzzle of charts; the spread-hand of land that is France, away across that comical riding boot of dusty Italy – and then downwards, to that knifepoint edge where the sun seems to reproach those who dare to tread the dust of the Holy Land. The earth is not how the pilgrims imagine it; by rights it should be verdant like an English summer at its best; like walking through a second Garden of Eden.

Not unslaked and fly-blown, a purgatory of aching rock and stinging sand underneath that scourge of a sun.

'Scripture never told us of this!' A disgruntled, put out, and above all, _middle-aged_ voice rings out with the well-bred bray of courtly Norman French, above the tired clop of exhausted hoof-beats. 'As barren a place as ever I saw! Not a goodly field in sight; what do they mean by it?'

The accent is deplorable; the owner has clearly never so much as seen a courtier who speaks the pure tongue. It thickly rings with the coarse, blunt features of Anglo-Saxon, and mingles with the harsher tones of the colder north. 'I see no lilies of the field yet! Your monks lie, that's for certain – I have a psalter at home shows nothing of this-'

'Lady mother-'

'Hold your tongue, Iveta! I do no discredit to the place…' the voice grudgingly granted that, but in a shrewish tone that belied her words.' Only the _next_ pilgrimage shall be Walsingham, that's all. At least you can be sure of home, within the hour, and some decent company on the road. Not these heathen caravans-'

'Madam, Walsingham is within eight miles of home. The Holy Land is not quite the same, I think? We are the heathens here.' The second voice spoke mildly; a younger voice, although it held a little of her mother's Saxon tongue – and also a little petulance. A very little; her mother's vast, querulous egotism would brook no opposition. 'And we would hardly find Jerusalem without help, and there are thieves and raiders and all manner of villainy upon the road-'

'When you hold the reins of a household, Iveta, you may do as you please! I take no lessons from my daughter! Besides,' her voice held a faint trace of complacency. 'We are better equipped than most pilgrims, I think.'

Iveta risked a dubious glance over her shoulder.

A word here on the mother; Dame Juliana was, in her own way, important. Important in her own circle, and a respected knight's wife, with more fiefs and villeinies than many a court baron could put to his title, but since most of her income came from sheeps-wool and a beady-eyed wariness about her clerks, she had never come within sneezing distance of London. She was still very much the coarse goodwife she had always been. Blessedly Sir William, a mild-mannered man who had clung to his title through persistent equivocation rather than strident law-suits, was long gone; Dame Juliana had embarked on this particular example of piety out of a vague desire for 'saying of Masses for his soul.' But she had brought, out of her swollen pride, thirty men-at-arms to 'aid the protection of the Sepulchre and the holy city.' Iveta was ignorant of anything not concerning herself, but even she doubted that thirty bad-tempered fellows from out the wastes at home could severely impress the Royal Court of Jerusalem.

For a start, their numbers had dwindled to seventeen. Six of them 'fell from the party' mysteriously at Harfleur, along with half the baggage they had brought from the crossing to France. Two of them fell ill as they crossed to Italy with stomach gripes and were left behind. One was found stabbed outside a wayside inn, but since they were a parcel of rogues, it was hardly surprising that it hadn't happened sooner. It did not deter Dame Juliana, whatever misgivings it gave the other members of her party. The other four had refused to go any further, and those that remained simmered and seethed behind the horses, the road swelling their ill-temper with every step. The 'glorious' army of Christendom had been neatly sheared of half its members, and the glorious citadel was not even in sight yet. They followed, though. Draggingly, on their mistress's tail as she chid them from the relative comfort of her palfrey. Her daughter eyed them nervously behind her mother's bulk as she rode pillion, pretty and as petulant as a squirrel, before sliding off with a limp moan.

'I shall ride Mirrum's horse, mother. You bump in the saddle so! Besides, we must be close. The caravans go unguarded from here.' The third horse, which had been keeping a respectful distance during the dame's undignified squabbling with her tender offspring, drew to a halt as its rider dismounted. Iveta took the bridle with no very good grace, brushing dust off the clumsily stitched scarlet cross on her cloaked left shoulder, and then jerked the horse away to trot after her mother.

They were still arguing.

Mirrum, if that was the name, paused a moment, as though to take in the full range and depth of their foolishness. It was not possible to tell _what_ Mirrum was; whether male or female, villein or freeman; whatever it was, it was swathed in itchy linen, a hood pulled over the nodding head as scant protection from the sun and wind. Perhaps Mirrum was a mild-mannered boggart set to guard the foolish from their own folly; it would have seemed no stranger than the quarrelling, bickering mother and daughter, who made so strange a contrast to their pilgrim's badges with their chivvying arguments. The hood, at any rate, half-turned to exchange a glance with the foremost of the seventeen. He spat into the dust.

'Makes you wish something would scythe away the lot on' em,' he hiccoughed – with difficulty, through cracked lips. 'Especially _her_.'

'They're fractious with the heat, Mab. No need to wish them ill.' The hood nodded, as though the occupant was slightly amused. 'I don't think they'll be impressed with Jerusalem as it is. Think of their disappointment.'

'I'd boil 'em in their own juices with onions if I got the chance.' Mab wished fervently, cursing through his beard. 'Six years steward, and this is the thanks I get! And you, Mirrum. Say, what _is_ the Holy City like?'

'I don't know, Mab. I've never seen it.'

'Heard about it, maybe?' Mab enquired hopefully. The city of Heaven is supposed to be paved with gold, so it is. And angels fly about its towers, and there's no suffering or-'

'In the city of Heaven. Maybe.' Said the unseen Mirrum. Somewhat curtly. 'Jerusalem will probably be a _city_. A human city, with as many sinners and cutpurses as saints.'

'Oh.' Mab stood quite disappointed for a moment, as the rest of the men trudged achingly onwards. 'No angels, then.' A wide grin split his face in two. 'Best not tell them that, then?' he added, nonchalantly. 'You're right, Mirrum. _Think_ of their disappointment.'

'Mm?' Mirrum had wandered off somewhere inside that sackcloth hood; the voice was abstracted. 'Yes. I'd still like to see it though, Mab. Even the dust must have known Christ. We're treading in the path of the Messiah…' Mirrum looked towards the front of their miniature vanguard. 'And arguing on it, too. Alas.'

'You think too much, Mirrum.'

'I know, Mab.' The hooded figure ambled easily alongside, falling into step with him as they trudged onwards. 'I know.'

True to Mirrum's prediction, Dame Juliana was _not_ impressed by the first glimpse of the Celestial City granted to her and her erstwhile band. Mirrum had foreseen this; anyone who read milady's psalter as much as she would have acquired a very strange impression of the Holy Land. There were ripe cornfields and orchards in the illuminations; perfect, alabaster figures of saints and apostles painted to the size of a thumbnail, all with careful, blank, faces framed by golden hair. It showed England; you could see that. A perfect, bland, flavourless England.

There was very little gold in Jerusalem. That you could see, at least.

But there was something else. Oh, it was nothing the goodly dame or her daughter would have recognized; but those blank stone walls, bleached bone-white by the scourging heat, had a lazy, sun-soaked magic of their own; an ancient… knowledge, if you like, of the thousands of feet that had paced the dirt and dust of this inhospitable land and had carved out a citadel of stone and cool blue glass out of the dust itself. The light painted fantastic colours on the whiteness as they stood blinking at it; a weird, just-possible mirage on the horizon.

Mirrum's breath caught as though snagged on a wire. From a distance it was just possible to imagine painted angels fluttering like mayflies around it…

'As I thought,' Dame Juliana said in disgust, digging her heels into her horse's side with a snort of contempt. 'Dusty, dry, and not a sliver of God's green earth to be found anyway, nor a spot of shade. Or decent company.' She said suspiciously, eying a troop of Saint-Denis Knights who cantered past, unreadable behind their casques and nodding helmets. 'Soldiers and villains! No lords, no company…Compostela was not like this, my girl. Next time…'

'No ladies of birth either.' Iveta said crossly.

'Tch, tch… poor babeling. At least we get good lodging tonight.' Dame Juliana picked up the reins with a self-complacent smile. 'The Marshal is sure to welcome such as we…'

A sudden choking sound from the rear; Mirrum had made a horrified strangled noise, abruptly cut off behind the hood.

'The…_Lord_ Marshal, madam? You are sure that is wise-'

'We bring an armed force of loyal Christian soldiers to swear fealty to the kingdom of Jerusalem.' Dame Juliana said, her dumpy face widening into a superior smile. 'It is necessary, nay… imperative that we bring our humble offering, and in his gratitude to us – as nobles,' she added, 'he will surely find us lodging.'

Mirrum did not dare look at Mab's face. 'The Lord Marshal deals with… barons and _dukes_ and earls and… _knights_, milady. Huge forces of men. He is hardly likely to take kindly to-'

'Oh? And you have looked on the faces of many Lord Marshals, have you?'

'No, milady, but-'

'Am I not a knight's widow?'

'Yes, milady, there is no doubt of that, but-'

'You would have us take lodging in some slovenly tavern, I see. Or take charity from the monasteries –'

'There are precious few monasteries here, mother.' Iveta interposed boredly. 'Only the Hospitallers.'

'What is that to me? We go to hail the Lord Marshal as befits my rank! I take no grudging charity!'

'In London, perhaps, madam.' Mirrum interposed desperately, in one last sally to rescue the dame's dignity. 'London is different, there is no great need for armed men. Not here, I implore you – this may end badly, you may be treated with discourtesy…'

'May?' murmured Mab, under his breath. 'Has.'

Dame Juliana swelled like a bullfrog, her pouchy cheeks filling with ruffled pride and outraged dignity. 'Courtesy does not dwindle amongst people of rank,' she said, with a sniff of distaste at any objection being voiced by Mirrum at all. 'And we are attending the residence of the Lord Marshal in order to make our presence known at…court!' She rolled the word deliciously in her mouth as though it were a fragment of almond paste, tasting the grandeur with every syllable.

Mirrum's hood quivered, but it made no retort. What could you say to a woman like that? She was enough to quash a whole army with one basilisk glare, floating as she did on waves of arrogant self-confidence. Ambition was the current that she followed. For the most part it worked; sometimes, more humiliating times than once, it did not. Especially with noblemen to whom the Dame was so much wheat chaff with her petty manors and jealous jockeying for position. Mirrum saw, with the terrible clarity of foresight, no warm welcome from the Lord Marshal.

Already Dame Juliana was looking uneasy; her dumpling face had set strangely underneath the swaddling bands that tied up her plump face under her wide-brimmed hat. Mirrum would not have understood the comparison, but the dame was the very picture of the Wife of Bath, and her homely appearance and belligerent attitude had drawn stares once they were thronged amongst the knights and men-at-arms. As well as the various tokens of her alleged piety, the Dame jangled with miraculous medals, shells from Compostela, and enough pieces of the True Cross to have built a second Ark. Iveta had given up the horse in favour of hiding behind her mother's bulk in the crowd, nothing but her eyes peeping out; she was a little more astute than her mother. The incredulous glances they attracted might have warranted a party of mummers attending a court masque, rather than halfpenny pilgrims. Mab trudged alongside his mistress, leading the horse limpingly along; it was going lame. Iveta had ridden the poor beast too hard.

The linen hood, as well as Mirrum, went quite unnoticed amongst them all, a confused mass of Templars, Hospitallers, the Saint-Denis men that had passed them on the road… the cool white of a Cistercian monk dotted here and there amongst the crowd; it all blended into a giddy blend of colour. Jerusalem seethed with life like an upturned ant's nest.

They were more out of place in the somewhat more subdued courtyard, where the Lord Marshal held sway. It was quiet; punctuated only by a soft murmur of serious, dark-eyed men. The fringed shawl of a Pharisee billowed in the wind: black and white, as he murmured his way abstractedly through a roll of parchment. Peculiar, Mirrum thought idly. We are quite sure to be thrown out for our impudence but it makes me almost regret it. he liveried servants had carefully immobile, grave faces above their azure livery, although their eyes flicked over the dusty horses and travel stained newcomers with evident…

Mirrum could not read their expression. And did not care to, either. Besides, the fusillade of enraged oaths coming from the office of the 'Lord Marshal' did not bode well.

'God's wounds! I'll brook no more of your insolence!'

An angry, inaudible reply. Mirrum's ear strained to catch it, but the interview within seemed to be decidedly over.

Blissfully, Dame Juliana was immune to anything like subtlety or discretion. 'You there!' she bellowed, into the ear of a hapless manservant. 'Announce us to your master! Tell him that the pious Lady –'

'You have announced yourself quite aptly enough, lady.'

It was a bear who emerged blinking and scowling into the light. A grizzled, war-torn bear: lean-limbed, with the taut grace of a man who has survived many battles and will survive many more, with God's grace. The hair was already succumbing to the silver of a patriarch; the dark giving grudging way to the grey that laid siege to his temples. But the eyes were dark, intelligent eyes. Quick. Perhaps a little hasty to judge, Mirrum thought cautiously. And certainly quick to anger. They were already snapping fireworks as well as brisk Norman-French at the 'pious lady' with a fluent tongue. No fooling this man with false Norman nobility. Mab looked alarmed; Dame Juliana was flagrantly obvious as a fraud; a plump, squawking hedge-knight's wife with a Saxon burr and false pretensions. They would all be turned out on their ear, if not actually beaten for their presumption.

'Lady-'he said, hoarsely. 'I think we should –'

'A pox on your insolence! Stay silent!' Juliana turned. 'You, sirrah! Are you acquainted with the Lord Marshal?'

'Intimately,' the man returned dryly, shifting his stance from one foot to the other. 'I flatter myself I know _him_ as well as I know myself.'

A barbed jest if ever there was one. Juliana did not take its import, however, and ploughed on regardless.

'Lord be praised! Another night in this sweat-soaked filth…' She glared at him. 'Tell your master that my host will gladly swear allegiance to Jerusalem whenever he chooses to produce himself.'

The dark-eyed gaze grew sharper. 'Your _war host_? If your pathetic entourage is anything to judge of your… host, I would be very doubtful of the quality of your knights. How many armed men did you bring? Five hundred? Are there sufficient captains to keep them in good order? Did you bring archers?' He was baiting her, Mirrum realised, with a jolt. There was a certain wry gleam in one pocked eye that said he knew precisely how many 'knights' Dame Juliana had brought, and had anticipated the outraged gasps and clucks the lady uttered. And a certain note of enjoyment in his hoarse voice indicated this was a studied amusement of his…

The hood had stared rather too hard. The grizzled head turned sharply, glowered, in a vague 'what do you do, staring at me?' way at Mirrum, and then spoke again to Dame Juliana.

'I can speak for the Marshal of Jerusalem,' he said, with carefully calculated mildness. There was levelled steel beneath it. 'Lady. Your knaves will be welcome: as any who draws sword in defence of Jerusalem will be, but I _regret_ …the Court of Jerusalem can _not_ offer you hospitality.'

'And you are…'

'Raymond of Tiberias, lady. Marshal of this Court.'

How Dame Juliana sagged! It was only a momentary weakness, a flicker of dismay that showed just how severely she had blundered. But in her horror at her mistake, she grew foolish. She could have retired with good grace and a muttered apology, but instead… she grew hysterical. And if possible, more insulting than before.

'Perhaps this is a question of money, rather than hospitality,' she brayed, wheeling her horse about. 'Mirrum holds the purse; _she_ will dispense what seems fitting to you. Come, Mab!'

Mab's mouth had fallen open, aghast at the flagrant affront.' We shall visit the Temple of Jerusalem whilst this is… _settled_.'

'To barter with your twenty pieces of silver for the money-changers?' Lord Tiberias enquired loudly, with acid inflection.

Dame Juliana was already forcing her jaded horse away through the throng outside, her shoulders hunched over. Iveta looked back once – but only once, and with such a blank gaze that it hardly showed sympathy or no. Mab had vanished, wraithlike; no telling where he had gone to.

Mirrum's hood turned slowly upwards. The Lord Marshal had hardened into an immobile statue, motionless, staring at the muffled figure as though, like Lot's wife, she had changed to a pillar of salt. Mirrum half-wished she had.

'Well?' he said, his voice still etched with cold anger. 'Are you going to offer me 'what seems fitting?' as your profligate mistress puts it?'

Mirrum hesitated –

'No.'

'Hrrm.' Tiberias grunted, still staring suspiciously down at her. You have a better sense of place than she, at least. Although that does not bespeak _much_ sense on your part, I grant you.'

'Forgive her. Please.' Mirrum suddenly found a tongue. 'She did not understand; we could not dissuade her from-'

'Ah… Freeborn, then. But with a sprinkling of common sense.' The Lord Marshal appeared to be holding an animated conversation with empty air as well as sustaining grudging conversation with Mirrum. 'Was 'we' that poor clown of a steward? And you may get up. Not kneel there like a cringing dotard. A pretty mummery this is!' There was a slight thaw in his tone, as though the farce of the situation had hit home and tickled his sense of humour. 'Get _up._ What sort of heathen name is Mirrum?'

Mirrum rose with as much stifled, terrified dignity as –I suppose we must say _she -_ could muster. 'Miriam, my lord,' she said warily. 'My father named me from the Bible. It slides together badly on the Anglo-Saxon tongue, but…Mirrum suits me. Will you punish my lady? She intended no offence, my lord! And I have not-'

The battle-axe of a face peered speculatively down at her, the lines creasing momentarily into a brief smile. Gone as fast as winter sunlight. 'I have better things to occupy myself with than fat goodwives from the country,' he remarked wryly. 'I will confess to you, it was an ill-natured jest of mine to vent my spleen on her. And no, before you ask.' the wolf's snarl in his voice had faded. 'I don't intend to beat you about the bounds the city for her sins. I'd never leave off, else.' He added, sardonically. 'Know you where she goes?' Mirrum shook her head. 'No? I doubt she knows where _she_ rides, let alone the city. She'll be back to claim courtesy with menaces, then. Best wait your lady's return. You may uncover your head, girl. I dislike feeling as though I talk with grim Death.'

Mirrum, when uncovered, lost something of that air of swaddled mystery that had covered her before. She was revealed to be a small hopping sparrow of a thing – small, mouse-haired and blinkingly ordinary in homespun, with a plain slash of white face marred by a corn sheaf of almost colourless hair. As though the sun had faded her like an old tapestry. But her eyes were bright, and her smile was both rueful and slyly appreciative of the abrupt exit of her good lady.

'Ah.' The Lord Tiberias said, with satisfaction. 'You _are_ human after all; not the perfect model of an obedient lady-in-waiting. I thought perhaps you half-enjoyed the sensation of seeing her bested. I was not sure with your cowl.'

'I wouldn't deny it,' Mirrum said, a grin twisting her features into pensiveness. Her speech held a faint trace of accent, although it was a dialect Tiberias could not trace, even in the great melting-pot of Jerusalem. She dipped her skirts in an ungraceful courtsey


	2. Chapter 2

There was no inherent grace in Mirrum; everything she did was at easy ambling pace. Even here.

'And you hold the purse-strings, yet the goodly dame does not…' Tiberias' brows knitted together slightly, as though trying to fathom out this particular puzzle. 'Either she is more trusting than she seems, or…' his eyes flicked over Mirrum. 'Natural child?'

Mirrum looked quizzical, for a moment, until she grasped his meaning. 'No!' she said tartly. 'My father is an Oxford lay clerk, my lord. And my mother is assuredly _not_ –'

'Annoyed, I take it.' Tiberias said tranquilly. 'Ah, forgive me. It was insolently put, and assuredly not complimentary to either party.'

'Not to the dame.'

'Or, perhaps, you…?' Tiberias grunted. 'I am surprised that any of you made it this far without being waylaid and murdered – especially with your braying mistress's tongue.'

Mirrum dropped her eyes. 'We had… letters of safe passage,' she murmured, embarrassedly. 'They stood us in good stead along the way…'

'Mhmm?' Tiberias said absently, squinting in the sun. 'Saint's benisons, I hope-'

'My own.'

Mirrum suddenly eyed him, speculatively, as though weighing and measuring him herself – although out of the corner of her eye. The bear did not bite – and he had shown himself to be kindly – even if it was albeit grudgingly for her mistress. And he had such a peculiar gruff, see-sawing motion of good-humour and growling pretence by turn, as though pretending, for the moment, that she was his equal…

This was a game of wits, and she was invited to play.

'May I… make confession?' She said evenly.

'I'm no priest,' Tiberias muttered abstractedly. 'Come out of the sun, girl, it goads my sight unmercifully.'

Mirrum gratefully took a few steps towards the hazed canopy, her curiosity momentarily piqued by the office of Jerusalem. It was a bustle of clerks and ink, scribes scuttling hither and thither with scrolls and inventories; all the paraphernalia of clerics and laymen alike.

'I bear the purse-strings, my lord, because my lady is not lettered, and neither is her daughter. Her steward has some little learning – but it takes tact, my lord, to navigate through Italy and beyond. Diplomacy. And she would take no priest or lettered man with us. I am the closest one of us who could, perhaps, pass as a scholar.'

'A scholar?' The dark eyes flashed, took in, again, and with some incredulity, the plain and decidedly plebeian appearance of the swaddled waiting-woman. 'You?'

'Among women I pass for one,' Mirrum said uneasily. 'My father was an Oxford lay clerk, my lord. He taught me too well from his own store of knowledge, I fear. He copied the great books for the Libraries – the great ones at Winchester, and Beaulieu – the white monks paid him well for his services as scribe. Well enough to find me service in a good family after he took the cowl and the monk's cell, at last.'

Tiberias looked unsurprised. It was common enough for men, having enjoyed the contentment of wife and child, to in the closing twilight of his years embrace the cowl by paying service to God. The monks provided well for men who chose that; it was a quiet, secluded retirement.

'That is why… I could pen the letters of safe-passage,' Mirrum said, dragging the words unwillingly from her dry throat. 'Myself. We should by rights have asked them of bishops as we passed from land to land, but –'

'God's bones! You forged them?'

Mirrum dropped her pale pebbly eyes, nodded modestly. 'You have seen a little of my lady's manner, I think. And bishops have to be approached with… delicacy. You can imagine what would happen if she entreated a bishop for letters of safe-passage. We would have been denied, and then robbed, murdered, or… worse.'

'That is -…' Tiberias found his voice, somewhat astounded to find a maid-turned-forger. 'Mortal sin, is it not? Common enough in the politics of royal court, I know well, but-' he scrutinized her again. 'God's blood! Why weren't you embroiled in the intruigues of the Curtmantle? Instead of in service – and such service? And to forge the pious whiffle of churchmen's letters-'

Mirrum found herself liking the Lord Tiberias despite herself. He spoke what he thought, aloud, and cared not a fig for what anyone thought – and she had expected whipping, or denouncing. Not a sort of detached admiration. But she had choked on the sin all the way – swallowed it down, like a hot coal nesting amongst her ribs. And it was not true confession. She did not dare confess to God, lest she be forced to take to it again out of necessity, for her lady's safety. Confessing to another fellow-man was infinitely more preferable.

'You must have Latin, then.' Tiberias declared. 'You are right, you are taught too well – far too well for a woman. _Antiquone modo Latine loqueris, an Oxoniensi?'_

There was open challenge in his face. Ah. This was another test. Mirrum's face twitched, a moment, as though trying to hold the dead, forbidden words of Latin back. Everything was a test with the Marshal; perhaps from gauging so many men's souls, he had developed a sort of trial; to judge every man by.

'_Quem me docuit pater, Magister.'_ She returned, bobbing to the dusty stone with lowered eyes.

'_Bene. Optimus est._'Tiberias half-smiled, the scarred cheek growing more pitted. His Latin came slowly, as though drawn deeply from some well of memory. '_Graecamne linguam quoque tu docuit?'_

Mirrum's reply came lightning fast; with no need to hold it back, the phrases flowed thick and free.

'_In litteris Graecis tamen, note minus quam Latinis, ars magistri minuitur discipuli stultitia._ _Graecam me docuit pater, et mei patris amicus.'_

'Enough! You 'maze me with your scholarly manner.' Tiberias said gruffly, not caring, perhaps, to be forced to tilt in the lists of learning in Greek as well as Latin. 'You surpass me, at any rate. But why the opening of your sin to me? It is not grave to _me _– bishops have very little holiness about them in these days of impiety.'

'I want to beg three days hospitality of you,' Mirrum said in a low voice. 'In a stable, in an oxcart – anywhere my lady may be safely housed and where I may scribe the letters needed for the return journey – home. She does not know, but if we are to get home safe…'

'Back home safe to your thatched pigsties.' Tiberias said musingly. 'What appeal lies therein for _you_, I wonder?'

The erratic clip-clop of hooves tiredly striking the stones of the courtyard forewarned them of the lady's return. Tiberias said something soft and savage under his breath in Norman-French that made Mirrum's lowered eyes widen.

'I shall see,' Tiberias said curtly. 'For your sake, mind you. You have wit enough to get by; but not she. I wouldn't waste your breath in trying to save such a one as _she_ from shaming herself. I can find you lodging.'

He rose, with a restrained air, as though already hemming in his thoughts concerning the 'goodly dame.'

Dame Juliana had suffered from the heat and midday. Her wimple was soaked with yellowed patches of sweat, her face red, uncomfortable, and streaming from the heat – and she was hacking at her horse with her riding crop as though beating it would counteract the fact that it was jaded and thirsty, its eye already glazed with suffering. Behind her, Iveta looked no more than an awkward bundle of washing strapped to her mother, her hair plastered to her ashen face.

'Thieves! Charlatans!' Dame Juliana was yelling at the outer courtyard, to a fusillade of jeers from the men-at-arms. 'Jostling, push-push-pushing like common swine! What happened to true soldiers-in-Christ?'

'Ultimately, my good dame, they remain soldiers.' Tiberias said dryly, unable to resist one last barbed jest. The sting would pass clean over the lady's head, after all. 'With soldiers' faults and sins heavy upon them.' He laid one hand on the bridle of the horse. 'Will you dismount?' he said, with weary courtesy. 'I have talked with your…' he glanced at Mirrum, 'lady-in-waiting, and find that there is, indeed, the hospitality of Jerusalem. You will not find the Court wanting in – homage, to your…nobility.' There was certainly disguised contempt there; Mirrum was finding it difficult to keep a straight face without her hood.

'Oh?' Dame Juliana said suspiciously, allowing her bulk to be handed down to the ground. 'How is this? And you needn't trouble yourself about the girl; she's no _lady_-in-waiting. A waiting woman, perhaps, at a pinch – a scrivener's daughter.'

Mirrum winced.

Tiberias pretended comical amazement, tugging his rough thatch of beard as though amazed. 'No? But how does a lady like yourself suffer to be attended, then? She assured me you were kin to the great Earl Ranulf himself –'

Dame Juliana preened a little, like an overweight peacock. 'Truly, sir? Well, my kin have always held the ancient roots of Hengest, by long repute…'

'You must tell me all, lady…' Tiberias let Iveta down – or rather, let her drop, like a sack of knobbled potatoes, to the floor, where she staggered limply to her feet. He exchanged a martyr's glance with Mirrum (who had to stop the corners of her mouth twitching disrespectfully) 'I am most interested in your lineage…'


	3. Chapter 3

**For all non-Latin-speakers (myself included) The Latin conversation in the previous chapter translates, roughly, as:**

_**Is your Latin the old Latin, or Oxford Latin?**_

_**My father's Latin, Master.**_

_**Good. That is the best. And has he taught you Greek too?**_

_**It is with the Greek as it is with the Latin; the skill of the master is lost in the pupil's lack of it. I was taught by my father, and my father's friend.**_

**NB: The obscure reference to 'Curtmantle' is not fictitious. It was the less than complimentary nickname of Henry II, father of Richard the Lionheart. His court was even then known for its conspiracies and intrigues; Henry was the notorious monarch who rashly wished Thomas a Beckett dead and regretted it ever afterwards. It's highly probable that Tiberias, as one of the old true French brigade, would sneer at the Norman upstarts colonising themselves on the cold, wet island of England, but that 's mostly creative conjecture on my part as a writer. All mistakes, of course, are utterly and completely my own.**

Mirrum wondered ever afterwards what kindly saint had smiled on them there, in making the Marshal such a man of contradictions. He had growled blackly at the dame like the grimmest and most savage of bears, and then – had performed an abrupt somersault, it seemed, like a tumbler, and proved himself to be kindly disposed with that awkward jostling of good humour alongside his dwindling distrust.

Mirrum wasn't sure if it were her 'confession' or not that had staved the way open for them all. She found herself hardly disposed to care, under the circumstances. Juliana's inordinate pride was placated, her sense of place mollified – and they had the protection of Jerusalem, where they wouldn't have had so much as a pigsty's worth of hospitality in London, with the Normans holding sway. There was nothing more to do than thank God indeed for His mercy in His pitiless country, and just…accept. Without question, for now. Any man who could so bravely plunge himself into the breach by courteously enquiring after the clucking Dame's lineage was a true man indeed. Juliana could talk enough to cure any flower of chivalry of his upbringing.

Iveta, ever the dutiful daughter when it suited her, had few words. What more was there to say? They had been close to being thrown out, and now – they weren't. Iveta accepted whatever came her way placidly, and without complaint. Perhaps one had to, with a mother like that, Mirrum thought charitably. There would be far too much to complain about otherwise…

Mab looked startled beyond belief. 'You witch!" he said, half-admiringly. 'What did you do? I'd have staked my life we were going to get a whipping…'

'I don't know.' Mirrum said honestly, trudging amiably along in the Dame's wake with their bundles and baggage. 'Perhaps the Lord Marshal isn't used to being told the truth plainly any more. I think I took him by surprise.'

'That what you did?'

'I think so.'

'Lord's truth!'

They walked in silence for a while.

'What happens now?' Mab asked, blinking the sweat out from his sandy-lashed eyes.

'We rest.' Mirrum said bluntly. 'That's what I plan to do. We stay in Jerusalem for a few days; perhaps take the road in the company of other pilgrims to Bethlehem. Milady talked about it a little. And then, once she feels sufficiently pious… we go home again. And that is all.'

'Oh.' Mab sounded disappointed. 'I were never in a _royal_ court before, though. Not a proper one. Don't you think maybe they might-'

'I hope not.' Mirrum winced as something sharp in the sacking of the bundle bit her. 'They're kinder here than they would be in England, Mab, giving a parcel of hedge-women from the muck house-room. Kinder than they should be. My lady never knows when to cry 'Hold!' And I fear she may – sour the hospitality already given.'

'Couldn't you just tell the truth again?' Mab said hopelessly. 'What exactly did you tell him?'

'Nothing, really.' Mirrum considered the problem, her pale wisp of face damp. 'He guessed the trouble we had on the way. And I just… finished what he didn't know.'

She evaded the letters. Mab was a good steward where numbers and accounts were concerned on the little muddy fiefs. At home. But he placed an absolute, unshakeable trust in anyone who was lettered, and to own that the letters she had penned were not holy bishops' words would shake him. Make him afraid, make him sure of hellfire. Mab no more deserved hellfire than a wobbly-legged goat kid; he was good. And what was the use of bad knowledge?

I am something like Eve, Mirrum thought, jogging along underneath the scratchy sackcloth bundles and saddle-rolls that made up the sum of the goodly dame's possessions. Lord Tiberias kept up a quick, limping pace as he led the way that made the weary retinue tread faster in order to match him. Yes, Eve. I have the knowledge of good and – well, if not evil, then… _necessar_y evil, that would frighten men like Mab, and yet – it does not startle worldly creatures like my lord Marshal. I wonder why?

She couldn't quite work out, even now, how the Marshal could wring guest-room for them out of the Court; after all, there were knights and barons and earls pouring in, like a trickle of incessant rain. But Lord Tiberias irritably waved aside an officious liveried squire as though kicking aside a fawning lapdog, and gestured curtly to a doorway.

'There. Bed.' He said abruptly, once again clipped and monosyllabic. 'Little enough, but enough for rest. We dine late; I shall send someone to bring you to supper.'

Iveta curtseyed, dutifully in time with her mother, and just as insincerely. Mirrum bobbed clumsily behind her packages, before letting them drop with a grimace. Mab, unsure of what to do, just stared thickly through his beard for a moment before bowing his head and vanishing thankfully into the cool darkness.

Lord Tiberias looked as though he would have gladly vanished on the spot himself, away from the fulsome, arrogant concession of gratitude that appeared fleetingly on Dame Juliana's lips. But Mirrum's parchment-coloured face must have reminded him of something. He turned, and came back a few steps, his face inscrutably…calculating, somehow. As though he were making numbers dance a political jig inside his grizzled head.

'You will forgive the liberty, Madam,' he said smoothly. 'We are somewhat_… short_ for serving-women to wait at table, and I fear your lady-in-waiting may need extra instruction so not to seem… out of place.'

'What?' Juliana gaped for a moment, and then hissed at Mirrum like an angry goose. 'Yes! Of course! Of course! Don't just stand there! Show gratitude to the Lord Marshal!'

And then she vanished into the blessed quiet and dark too, dismissing everything for now in the urge for peace, quiet – silence.

The Lord Marshal's black eyes shone hard as grape stones until she had waddled into the room. Only then did he speak.

'_Ever_ served at table, girl?'

Mirrum shook her head, bewildered, lost in this new game.

'Ah well, I did not expect it. You are no page.' Tiberias said ruefully. 'And the company you keep no doubt has not seen much feasting. I shall have to arrange matters so you shall not serve, that is all. You have a quick eye; watch what others do, imitate - and all shall be very well.'

'My lord?' Mirrum said uneasily. 'We beg only three days respite at most.' For it had occurred to her that he expected them to drain their welcome like a horseleech, draining, draining until they were unwelcome. And for all she knew the Marshal knew quite well what Dame Juliana was; a loud-mouthed Saxon goodwife with more money than sense – Mirrum could not bear for her mistress to be here, in God's country, and seen to be a charlatan.

'Do _you?_' Tiberias' heavy dark eyebrows lifted a fraction. ' You have pride – for yourself, at least. That is good. I _require_ you at table tonight, girl. There is someone there I think you should meet.'

And then he was gone, striding unevenly down the hall as though he had done no more than taken a light stroll to stretch his legs.

The cryptic remark, however, completely stole away any chance of rest Mirrum might have had. She lay awake for hours into the aching heat of the afternoon, trying to puzzle it all out. What did it mean? What did it all mean? Perhaps it was some retinue of noble pilgrims they could travel with in safety, she decided, after a long period of tossing and turning. Yes. That must be it. The Lord Marshal was a good man, that much was clear; and, what was worth far more, an intelligent one. Although not at all what she had expected. The kingdom of Jerusalem was so very different…

The room was stifling. It was generously spaced; true enough, and there were low pallets that made the flea-ridden straw mattresses of guest-houses seem merely a bad memory away, but the heat was like a suffocating hand laid over her mouth. It crushed them all underneath its oppressive weight. Above, in lazy circles, flies buzzed aimlessly near the ceiling. Occasionally, the sweat-soaked lump of linen that was her mistress would groan in her sleep, twitching a fat-dimpled hand. Iveta (or rather, Urfried, Iveta's real name. It was stolid Saxon; but of course, affecting grandeur they did not posess, her mother insisted on Iveta when abroad on pilgrimage) did not move at all. She had curled up like a mouse on the other side of the room. Mab lay sprawled on his back, snoring at the ceiling to his heart's content, arms out flung above his head.

Everything was well for them. Only Mirrum still lay awake, watching the flies buzz angrily around in their trapped circles. Like the thoughts inside her head. How many other girls can say they have been where I am now? In a palace, talking to lords as amiably as how-you-please, in the very centre of the world – and not turned out for a charlatan and a miscreant forger. And waiting to feast…Lord of Hosts!

Perhaps I'm delirious, Mirrum thought ruefully. I collapsed on the way, and I'm wandering in heat-apoplexy. This isn't real, any of it. Marshals haven't asked me to wait on a royal banquet; we never even made it as far as Jerusalem. But if it is heat-apoplexy… then there shouldn't be flies. It should all be perfect, faintly unreal.

It was real enough. That frightened Mirrum more than she could say; because it was suddenly thrown into unpredictability. The cheap squalor of charity guesthouses and crowded marketplaces she was familiar with. Royal courts and quiet blue tiles and carved alabaster – a palace seeming cut out of the endless azure sky and the clouds itself? That she was not used to. And the twinge in her stomach was one of terror as well as apprehensive excitement. What if she blundered worse than Dame Juliana?

'Wake, girl!' A sharp toe in her side roused Mirrum from her reverie. Her mistress had nudged her with her foot, glaring impatience. 'The feast, girl! The feast!'

'But it is not yet sundown, my lady…'

'You would have us go travel stained? Spattered with dirt from the road?' Dame Juliana's double chins wobbled like the wattle of a turkey cock. 'Find us water! And bring out gowns…fitting to the occasion.'

Water, mercifully, was not far off. Mirrum did not dare appear like a shabby beggar in the serving quarters of the palace; but there was a fountain trickling peaceably in the Marshal's court. By nervously retracing her footsteps –

It was empty now. There were still a few men clustered here and there; who watched her owlishly over their piles of parchment, but Mirrum was used to scholars. They were of no more concern to her than sheep; they had always scuttled about the dim cloisters of her childhood.

Arraying her mistresses was a more difficult matter. For a start, everything was crumpled into rags from weeks of being crushed at the bottom of saddle-rolls. Iveta's hair stuck damply to her head in greasy strands, even with the water. It had to be braided for it even to look decent. Juliana hid her own greying head under her wimple, and smoothed her voluminous kirtle as best she could, but even then…

As Mab said, from his surly position at the door, 'like dressing a pair of ill-matched fowls for dinner. One o' 'em's too skinny, an' the other's too rotten.'

Mirrum pulled a face at him. 'We'd be laughed at at any case.' She said gloomily.

'Rather you 'n me.'

Mirrum was not much better than either. At least she was a servant; she had an excuse to look slovenly. And if she coiled her linen wrappings about her head into a coif, she looked neat; serviceable. Plain, compared to the magnificent liveried squires; but… serviceable.

The squire who came to light the way to feast looked down his nose at them in magnificent disdain.

'Which of you,' he enquired with hauteur, 'Is the one to wait at table?'

'The insolence-'

'My lady mother is no servant!'

'Me.' Mirrum spoke quickly, to cover the red-faced effrontery. 'I am.'

He sniffed. 'You, is it? Follow me, my lady. I will guide you to your places. _You-'_ He wheeled about, to stare at Mirrum again.' You follow three paces behind your mistresses, understand? Do not speak. Stand at the right-hand side of the third seat prepared when we enter. If bidden to serve, you make your obeisance first.'

Mirrum nodded, fear clenching her stomach into a hard fist. This could all end so badly…

But it was so beautiful. Even as she walked submissively along, exactly three paces behind the dame, she held out her hand so her fingers could brush the soft smoothness of the tiled walls. Somehow she had expected them to be wet; the polished smoothnessmade it appear as though raindrops had just fallen. The exquisite patterns were trapped behind the glaze as though frozen forever…

'Don't dawdle.' The squire said curtly, noticing Mirrum trailing her fingertips over the walls like a blind man. 'And don't touch anything.'

Mirrum jerked her hand away, stung by the reproof. But she turned her head wistfully towards the wall, as though her pebble-coloured eyes could still stroke the fine intricate detail…

'Oh…'

She had never seen anything like it in her life.

There was no feasting hall. No rush-strewn red-stone harshness, like the halls and refectories Mirrum knew of in the north. The tables were spread out in a courtyard, surrounded by cloisters carved out of the purest white stone. It glimmered in the early evening light like pillars of snow. There was no roof; the cooler evening air opened onto the sunset, tempered by a few, early evening stars, and lit gloriously by the last light of the sun. There were flowers and pavilions of silk and, once more, the soft trickle of a fountain.

It made Mirrum's breath catch in her throat. But only for a moment; seeing the beginnings of a disapproving scowl in the squire's face (who, by the bye, seemed to feel the palace was his own, and not to be sullied by insignificant little serving wenches' amazement), she meekly wandered in a dream to the place allotted to her, and there stood against the wall in a pleasant haze. There was one thing to be said for serving 'at table' like this; it was excellent for watching, without seeming rude. She could see all the serried ranks of the Court itself…

For the most part, it seemed to be serious nobleman, bearded and solemn in dark-coloured silks. Mirrum looked at them all keenly in turn, wondering which, if any, were the prospective pilgrims they were to travel with. There were very few women, she noticed. Only one serious-minded woman, her hair sketched lightly with grey caught her eye, who sat earnestly conversing with a hawk-profiled nobleman; her husband, Mirrum supposed. She looked very stern; her mouth was positively forbidding. Her lips thinned visibly as Dame Juliana, squawking and nudging her daughter with suppressed excitement, sat down before her name was even announced, and then made to rise again. Iveta tugged her mother down, her face agonised, as she saw the looks of mocking amusement and mingled disdain they were getting from the rest of the Court.

Mirrum tried not to look, after that. It was too painful to watch Juliana accidentally elbow a mild-looking man out of the way in reaching for the stuffed goose, and to then utter muffled apologies through a mouthful of quail…

Mercifully, Lord Tiberias seemed to have arranged it so she _didn't_ have to serve, after all. He was sat judiciously out of reach of the pilgrim dame, eyes wandering absentmindedly up and down the length of the table; wincing a little as they roved over the dame, looking as forbidding and unapproachable as the carved figure of a mailed knight, rather than a living man. He looked gloomy; a habitual frown gathered at the corner of his eyes. He nodded, however – abruptly, just the once, as though acknowledging her presence. But then his eyes slid from her, purposefully looking away.

'The Bishop Heraclius!'

This a rather subdued Court, Mirrum thought idly to herself, as demure, sour-faced cleric took his place with a rattle of Paternoster beads. I imagined Courts to be so much different; not so quiet, so solemn. For the conversations in dignified Norman-French were all very low, and very serious. Are the stories of Camelot and the Court of Avalon all wrong, then? All those stories of dancing and ladies fair, and music and merriment all false? Mirrum had not thought to look for the king at table, and she eagerly looked up and down, trying to puzzle out which one he was. She had always had a reverence for the tales of King Arthur. Perhaps he was that one in green, with the powdered yellow curls and the clipped beard? Or the dark-haired one, who was – No, not him, she realized, deflated. Not anyone. There would be more of a distinction surely, than between these grave politicians who spoke in murmurs between themselves. They were all alike. Mirrum found herself vaguely disappointed; kings, to her mind, were as mythical as spirits; vaguely unreal in the way that saints are –carved into virtue or vice by words. It would have been something to remember. But then again, perhaps it was a mercy – with Dame Juliana sitting in a pool of unhappy isolation. She had attempted to strike up conversation with her neighbour, but he had turned upon her a look of disgust that would have shrivelled a more timid woman, and then ignored her completely. If the reaction of the Court was anything to go by, a king would have taunted her unmercifully…

'Behomond D'Abray!'

Mirrum shifted from foot to foot, tired of playing guessing games. The Marshal had not caught her eye again; he was dispiritedly pouring wine for himself with a jaded, world-weary air. Whoever she was supposed to se was plainly not here…

I shall make my own court, Mirrum thought rebelliously. Inside my head. She often did this; when bored, or at a loss. Played at being at the court of the Fisher King; although Mirrum never played at being a lady. From scrutinizing Iveta's mannerisms Mirrum had decided that ladies were far too petulant and spoilt to be worth the -

'The Lady Sybilla, Princess of Jerusalem!'

The whole table rose in a respectful murmur. Mirrum, roused, suddenly caught Tiberias' black eyes flashing a momentary glance of – what? Warning? Surmise? At her, as though to say, 'This is the one-'

Three slender hunting hounds raced ahead, fawn-coloured with large, liquid eyes. They scuttled meekly under the table as their mistress arrived.

It was a seraphim. Mirrum blinked fast, wondering, remembering what Mab had said about angels swooping about the towers of Jerusalem. That was, after all, what it looked like; a gorgeously attired seraphim, with wings of flame-coloured saffron silk that glittered in the evening light – until it fluttered, revealing itself to be empty sleeves rather than angel's wings.

'Forgive me, my lords.' A soft, slightly accented voice, that bubbled with arch enjoyment. 'I am fashionably late to dine?' It was not truly a question.

Tiberias bowed his head, with careful gallantry. ' It was well worth the wait, as always, my lady.' Then, in a lower voice. 'No Guy?'

'Guy is elsewhere, and doubtless dining well.' The lady returned, _sotto voce_. 'His absence, is, of course, much lamented by his dutiful wife.'

'As by us all.' Tiberias spoke with well-placed sarcasm, dismissing the absent Guy with an irritable hand. 'You amply serve the deficiency...'

Mirrum missed the rest of their conversation in a haze of admiration. England did not produce noblewomen like _this_. The Lady Sybilla looked as though she had stepped out from the Odyssey as a second Circe. It was not in her dress; although that was a riot of colour, with the saffron-silk mantle and the ropes of amber beads. Coupled with the cobweb-fine linen that looped her slender neck she was like a swan dabbled in flame. The real enchantment was in her face. The pretty, witty muzzle of a monkey, smooth as a carved saint; and were it not for the lively mischief glittering in her bright eyes. Very large and lustrous eyes they were too; pale blue sharp against the extravagant kohl that shadowed her eyelids. Her hands were painted, daubed with henna in swirling patterns that seemed to move with her fingers. Mirrum felt a faint pang within her, as though grieving for something lost. The Lady Sybilla was impossibly beautiful, just as a princess should be, but the beauty seemed to hurt one, like a pain in the stomach, because she looked so –

Mirrum could not think of a word to fill the gap, either in French or English. Or the handful of Arabic that she had gleaned from traders, pitifully small. Nothing described it.. It was something in the way the painted fingers twitched restlessly on the table, never still, never quite at ease; as though she was nervous. Like a tamarind monkey; one of those melancholy creatures with too-big eyes and sad, twitchy little movements that show they're afraid of the predator in the night. Something inhabiting the Lady Sybilla's fingers had the quality of a hunted animal…

Mirrum looked up from her thoughts to see Tiberias, staring hard at her in her corner, lean over and murmur something near the lady's ear. She turned, looking half surprised, half disbelieving, and then flicked her eyes towards Mirrum. Both stared at her.

Mirrum looked down, at her battered shoes and crumpled cotte. Anywhere rather than stare like a loon at the Lady Sybilla. The Princess looked vaguely dismissive: who is this pale little ghost of a creature who cannot meet my eye? But Tiberias murmured something else that made her eyes widen in her head, as she turned it slightly, and then flicked her head straight back to stare at Mirrum again.

'My glass,' she said clearly, never moving her eyes from Mirrum's, 'needs to be filled. Not _you_-' For the disdainful squire had stepped dexterously forward with a pitcher of wine. She nodded towards Mirrum. 'Her.'

Mirrum's mouth dried in horror. She took one clumsy, faltering step forward, made her obeisance, and took the wine-pitcher. Several pairs of curious eyes followed her, wondering at the display of favour the Princess of Jerusalem showed to this unknown.

Careful, careful… pour it slowly, from the lip of the jug. Don't spill; that will cost you a beating. But don't seem to be too cautious with the wine; you'll seem miserly…

'You pour well,' The Lady Sybilla held out her glass contemplatively to the light as the pale wine fell into it, leaning back so her lips were opposite Mirrum's bowed head. 'Tiberias sings your praises to me,' she whispered, looking knowingly at the pale slash of face opposite her own. 'I cannot as yet guess why, little wraith, but I would like to test you; if you are what he says you are.'

'Y-yes, my lady,' Mirrum said, trembling.

'I would not use her much, your majesty,' Dame Juliana's braying voice floated down from the end of the table. 'She is ill-bred and slovenly. Her place is in the byre-'

Mirrum saw the ivory face suddenly freeze, the cornflower blue of the eyes seal shut as though trapped underneath a lid of ice. 'I did not address myself to _you,' _The Lady Sybilla said witheringly. 'There, that is enough-' she put her hand over the lip of the jug. 'Well-poured for a creature of the byre, little wraith.'

Mirrum inclined her head slightly, 'My lady…' she said, in a small voice, and retreated gratefully to her corner. Dame Juliana gobbled slightly, eyes agape. Someone had managed to silence her for once. A miracle in itself.

The feasting passed in blessed uneventfulness after that ordeal by fire. Unless you counted the sour looks from the squire; who seemed to have taken Mirrum's presence personally – and the incident with the bishop. Juliana upset a jug of red wine that flooded the illustrious cleric's plate, and provoked an outburst upon the iniquities of 'provincial woman!' that would sear her servant's memory for some time to come. Although not altogether without a stab of vindictive delight. Mirrum did not pretend to be a saint.

The Lady Sybilla and Tiberias had talked discreetly for some time behind their wine-glasses and trenchers. Mirrum had pleasantly drifted off, on not being forced to serve, and was idly dreaming of a tale of Nimue and Merlin. Only this time Nimue wore orange silk wings and fine linen, and Merlin wore a scowl and a pronounced limp…

With a feline, graceful movement, Lady Sybilla rose from her place, snapping her fingers impatiently. 'I need light,' she announced, her gaze flicking deliberately once more over Mirrum's face. 'Light my way, girl. It grows dark.'

Mirrum had not been schooled this far; and she cast a frightened look at the Lord Marshal. But she observed how his eyes flicked imperceptibly towards a lighted sconce, and held it uncertainly aloft –

'Three steps behind, you fool!'

Three steps behind. Mirrum fell into the pace, biting her lip. She had fumbled it dreadfully. And even now she was following the soft swish-swish of Lady Sybilla's robe as it rustled over the cold tiled floor –

'Stop.' Sybilla's face loomed suddenly out of the darkness; challenging, curious. 'That's enough. I've got you out of the cat's claws, haven't I, little ghost?' she smiled, a teasing, provoking smile. 'What's your name?'

'I- Miriam, my lady. That is, your maje-'

'Tcha! ' Sybilla waved the name aside with a click of her fingertips. 'No majesty for me. Miriam?Or Mirrum? Tiberias tells me it is both.'

'T-the Lord Marshal has been very good-'

'Only when the mood strikes him. Obviously you must have struck his sense of humour. I can see why.' Sybilla's smile was infectious; Mirrum smiled too. 'Such a colourless little thing; they tell me there is not much sun in England. Wretched, nasty place. Is that why? Your colour has all gone so pale and sickly?'

'I-'

'I jest!' Sybilla cocked her head on one side, eyes shining bright. 'Yes, _I_ like you. You shall be my little ghost. I shall call you that now. Little Ghost. But tell me – why do I like you, Little Ghost, tell me that? Tiberias says you are good at riddles.'

'You like me?' Mirrum thought hard about this. 'You like me because the Lord Marshal likes me.' She said at length. 'But then, if you both like me for the same reason – or rather, find me –'

'Useful. Yes, you are very useful. A rare, bobbing Little Ghost.' The corners of Sybilla's softened mouth twitched. This close she smelt pretty; the sharp sweet tang of lemon and sandalwood combined. 'But why might you be useful?'

Mirrum looked taken aback. 'To travel with on the road for safety in numbers?' she hazarded.

'_What_?!' Sybilla threw back her head and laughed, briefly. 'You guess wildly. Try again.'

'But we are pilgrims-'

'On the contrary. That fat dumpling is a pilgrim. Her skinny daughter is a pilgrim. You however – are _not_ a pilgrim. You are something else.'

Mirrum was bewildered, a little frightened. 'Am I-'

'The Lord Marshal told me to put you to the test. Worldly as a goose.' The words would have stung had the dame uttered them. The laughter in the Lady Sybilla's eyes softened the words. ' I can rest easy on that head, then. You are no spy…'

'Spy?' Mirrum's breath caught in her throat. Hanging, hanging, hanging… 'No, milady! I am no spy!'

'But you are lettered, yes?'

'That does not make me a spy!' Mirrum said hotly. 'Milady, if the Lord Marshal suspects-'

'Lord, what a firebrand!' Sybilla's eyes opened comically wide, making Mirrum pull up short, ashamed. 'The little ghost burns with indignation.' She touched Mirrum's sleeve lightly with two fingers. 'Three questions, little one. You know Latin, Greek, and French. Do you know any nobles here in Jerusalem?'

'No, milady!'

'Do you know anything of Jerusalem itself?'

'I-It's the Holy City, milady…'

'I shall take that as a no. And lastly – Would you take a place in my household, if it was offered to you?'


	4. Chapter 4

It was Mirrum's turn for her eyes to widen; the pebble-coloured irises growing huge in her head.. This was not real. But she was standing here, looking at the darkened eyes and glimmering face of a Princess, and she knew she could _never_ dream the Lady Sybilla. The princesses of Mirrum's imagination were like the kings; arch, golden-haired, smugly perfect and disdainful as a cat.

'What?!' she stuttered, fumbling tremulously with the torch. She could think of nothing else to say. The words had dried in her mouth. 'Milady-'

'Tiberias does not think you a spy, little fool.' Sybilla said briskly, as though impatient of Mirrum's lamentable slowness. ' I rather think you impressed him with your candour. Not many guest-pilgrims so frankly admit to forgery as one of their talents. And if he does think of you as a spy, he thinks of you as, perhaps, one of _mine_. One of ours.'

'But… you hardly know me!'

'Yes?'

'I could be anyone!' Mirrum insisted desperately. She had never believed she could feel such affection for the Dame before now. She might flap and squawk and be a hideous embrassment to both her daughter and her servants, but she was safe, and familiar, and all Mirrum had ever known outside the cloistered walls of the scriptoriums her father had lived in, that kingdom of paper and in a landscape of secrecy was unfamiliar to her. 'I _am_ no-one, milady! I am a poor henwife's serf! I don't know what the Lord Marshal told you, but the only thing I have is my wits, and that is not a very wonderful dowry. I am not fit to be anyone's spy!'

'Yes, I know that.' Sybilla said tranquilly, bestowing a brilliant smile on her torch-bearer. It was slightly dimmed; every now and then she looked anxiously down the length of the shadowy corridor, as though frightened of discovery. The smile was watered by slight uncertainty.'You _could_ be anyone. And you are _not_ a spy. But little ghost, you are an innocent, and an innocent with the gift of letters can _easily_ go astray. Although you have little chance of that with the fat dumpling. If you wish to remain with your mistress – ' she hesitated, before continuing. 'You have my blessing, and I shall light a candle every day for your sainthood,' she said blithely, shrugging her lovely shoulders as though it was of little importance to her, 'For it is martyrdom, serving a mistress like that. But I fear you will waste yourself. And for little thanks in return.I can tell that much.' Sybilla gave a faintly twisted smile. 'I_ could _offer you a place as one of my waiting women. You would have the protection of the Court of Jerusalem, and serve the royal line. Can a maid in your position ask anything more?'

'I… No, I…' Mirrum shook her head, sending the sheaf of mouse-coloured hair spinning across her appalled face. Something inside her was still clenched hard like a knot of fear, but on top of that there was a voice singing _Avalon, Avalon, Avalon…_

'I have never been a waiting woman to a noblewoman before,' she said shyly. Her fingers were being singed as the torch burnt downwards, but she scarcely felt it. _Avalon, Avalon, Avalon…_

'You choose the Dame?'

'What? No! No, milady! I-' an unhappy look spread over Mirrum's face. 'I cannot choose so soon. I am not fitted for it, I –' she suddenly looked askance at Sybilla. There was a strange, bitter eagerness in the carved lines of that pretty face that had not been there was not sure if she liked it. It made the face less pretty…

'Why do you need a lettered waiting-woman?' she asked, directly. 'Milady? Aren't there educated… ladies? Women of the court? You are educated too, milady.'

It sounded like a reproach. Perhaps Sybilla took it as one, for she glanced sharply at Mirrum, as though there had been some meaning in her words she did not like.

She calmly put Mirrum's words from her as though they did not exist. 'Take the other torch, _petit revenante._ You can still light me to my chambers.' She said lightly.

Mirrum unhappily nodded. The temptation was strong within her, she had to admit. To let fall the old life like a load of bricks, and step into-

_Avalon, Avalon, Avalon…_

Neither of them spoke a word on the journey through the labyrinth of the Palace. It was like a lacquered puzzle-box; what seemed to be a dead end would open up like magic into a winding corridor, or there would be stairs where you would expect there to be a blank wall. There was a deadly hush further into the Palace proper, too. The gentle murmur of the banquet gave way to an almost sepulchral silence.

'Here.'

A sliver of yellow light scythed across Sybilla's profile as she turned on the threshold, head cocked on one side. She looked very much as if she were gauging Mirrum's thoughts.

'You wish to know?' she said suddenly. 'Why two nobles you have never seen and never will again – if you choose differently - take so sudden an interest in you? And, as you say, I have lettered women. Clerks by the score for my household, better educated than you could ever dream of.' The Lady looked oddly defiant, defensive; as though Mirrum's hesitance was frightening her beyond measure. That startled Mirrum; Sybilla had seemed so sure of herself at table. Apart from the fingers, a voice reminded her from the back of her head. The Princess Sybilla is frightened.

'Don't think I mean to offend you,' Mirrum said quickly. 'I could never mean that. And I did not mean to say what I said to the Lord Marshal. It was dangerous and stupid.'

'Yes. It was. But also extremely opportune for us.' The merry light in Sybilla's eyes had completely faded. Without her mischief she was a different, paler version of the woman Mirrum had seen at table; more drained, less certain. 'We – that is to say, I – have need of someone with no links inside the city. No ties. I can be sure that you are not a double traitor, and-'

She stopped, abruptly. 'Come inside. Perhaps some things are better… shown, than explained. Here -put your torch out.'

It hissed with a rustle of straw as Sybilla threw it hastily into a ewer standing within the threshold of the door, suddenly bolting the door with over-eager, quivering, fingers. There was nothing but a latticework of feeble light from the passage filtering through the door now.

This isn't a three-step rule, Mirrum realised, staring at the profile that half-turned towards her. This is something else. In here I'm not a servant. I'm an equal. And we're both as frightened as each other.

Sybilla cast off the moment of mutual discomfort with a swift shrug of the orange silk. 'Bah!' she said, pretending uneasily to laugh. 'I am something of a stage player, aren't I? Delighting in secret and disguise? Here, walk softly. A few moments only…'

She softly approached a thin muslin curtain, drawing it back tentatively. One painted finger rose to her lips as she peered through the muslin, and then beckoned Mirrum forward. 'Don't wake him.' She said softly. '_Mon petit_ dreams lightly.'

A small fluff of fair hair was all Mirrum saw as she stood on tiptoe, but then it stirred from under the heaped coverlets, and it became a child. A small boy, pale and grave as wax work, curled up on an embroidered settle. His eyelids shivered slightly in his dreams.

'There. Enough.' The muslin fell again. Sybilla stared hard at Mirrum's face in the half-light. 'I keep _mon petit_ safe. He will be King within a few years at most, you understand? That is the heir to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He will be the first among equals, and he will be magnificent. I intend a great future for him, and if that means I must hoard him for myself then so be it. What is mine, I keep mine. He has no tutors but myself.' Sybilla's gaze had grown steely underneath the orange silk shroud. 'Now you know that. Remember it. It may save your life should you be tempted to betray me.'

Betrayal. She was so very frightened of betrayal, wasn't she? She nervously kept reassuring herself that Mirrum wasn't a spy, frantically avoiding any possibility of being seen; twitchy as a rabbit who scents a fox.

'What,' Mirrum asked quietly, 'Do you want?'

Sybilla looked away. Perhaps she was ashamed of the threat; most likely not.. Mirrum had the distinct feeling that whatever Sybilla did, she did with absolutely no regret. 'I will show you. Look. Look here.'

She fumbled amongst some papers for a moment, and then thrust two crackling pieces of parchment at Mirrum.

'My… husband, _petit revenante_, is an interesting individual,' Sybilla spoke in that same affectedly careless tone, with which she had mentioned her husband at table. 'A highly colourful man. Away at present. But he writes me letters about his intentions from time to time. Wonderful fiction.' Her voice was bitter. 'I wonder he does not tell me he has been carried into Paradise by St George. According to this – he is in Acre, meeting a party of his order to bring them to Jerusalem.'

'I understand, my lady.'

'Hah! Yes; for now. Now look at this letter to his steward. My steward too; cautious, to his credit.' A thin smile passed over Sybilla's lips as she shifted, with a rustle of silk. 'It took three handfuls of gold and nimble fingers to prise this one away. It is written in Greek on purpose, you see? I can speak the tongue, but not read it. And those who can are … influenced, shall we say, by my right worshipful husband's power at Court. There may be nothing in it, of course.' She darted a nervous look at Mirrum. 'But it is a recent thing, these messages in Greek. Always delivered at night, at odd hours.'

'You want _me_ to read them.' Mirrum said bluntly. 'Because I am little and obscure and I don't know your husband.'

She did not know how to feel about this turn of events. Angry, because Sybilla had taken away her right to choose. Mirrum now knew too much. She could not go back. There was a desperation in the Princess' eyes that spoke without words, and it said; I have come too far to baulk at this.

'Because you are little and obscure and you don't know my husband as the Court does.' Sybilla repeated numbly. 'As my servants do. All I ask is knowledge. I can barter for the letters from –others, who are loyal to me. You would be in no danger, you understand?' she added, somewhat late in the day for reassurance. 'To all eyes, you would be nothing more than a nursemaid for my son, an odd plaything for a bored noblewoman.' That's all!'

'Like a pet dwarf, milady?' Mirrum said coldly.

'Like a waiting-woman of the Court!' Sybilla's fingers bit into her arm. 'I would protect you. No one would suspect! You would be happy, and well content. I would make a dowry for you if you wed. Find you a husband! Guy may be plotting something against my son-'

'Is he not his son too?'

'Stepson.' Sybilla lowered her eyes, but did not release her grip. The elegant nails were biting sharply into Mirrum now, leaving crescent moons of pain by the urgent force of her grip. 'By my first husband. Guy is bloodthirsty and ambitious. Even an innocent like you must see a child would be easy meat for him. Without me. And without you, too. Read them. Read the letters for me. Let me know what is true and what is not, what he hides from me, what he truly does when he leaves Court. Please!'

Mirrum opened her mouth, hardly knowing what to say-

There was open pleading in Sybilla's wide, china-blue eyes, suddenly glistening over-bright in the deepening gloom.

'Please.' Sybilla said again.'Please.'

'I-' Mirrum licked her dry-as-dust lips and tried again; a scared, faded-tapestry girl standing scared in the dark. 'I… must…tell my mistress-'

'No!'

'Of my departure into your service, milady.' Mirrum finished carefully. 'You leave me no choice.'

There was a deep, breathy sigh of relief. 'You accept?'

If you can call it that, Mirrum thought sourly, peering through the dark. There was a paring knife lying discarded by a heaped pile of pomegranates and pears. If I'd said no, would she have hesitated at sliding that between my ribs? I know too much. If I was stupid and said no…

'I accept. On one condition, though.' She added, firmly. If she was trapped, at least she could do something for the daft Juliana.. 'It's murder if she leaves alone and unprotected. My mistress, I mean. The dame. Let her stay. I'll need to help _write_ letters for the journey home. I can have them finished within three days, and they'll be safe. Mab will know what to do, he watched me use them, he knows…' Mirrum realised she was pleading too, and stopped, abruptly. She did not truly want to beg of Sybilla now she had shown those mother's claws of hers. 'She may be stupid and coarse to you, but she… has been my mistress.' She said bluntly. 'I don't want her stabbed and left for dead on the way home from pilgrimage because of me.'

'I can do better than that,' Sybilla said quietly, watching Mirrum through narrowed lids. 'Heraclius is a pompous fool, but he can easily pen your Dame a letter of safe-passage. A real one. That should see her safe to Cyprus, and from there - there are ships to Venice. The safer way than direct from Messina. And the Lombards are great money-lenders; your Dame is better served than ever before.'

'Yes.'

Sybilla still watched Mirrum. Her grip was gentler now; but she did not let go. 'I will pay her handsomely for her loss, you know.' She said, watching Mirrum's face quiver in the dark. 'Now you think me wicked, _non_? The bad wicked queen who schemes in dark corners. Do you hate me?'

'You didn't let me choose.' Mirrum said tonelessly. 'My lady.'

'I have my answer.' Sybilla looked slightly pitying. '_Petit revenante_, you have much to learn of the world. Most of it is made of having no choice. I am not cruel. I do not berate you for having wit. Do you really regret leaving the Dame behind and her daughter's simpering sheep-eyes? Truly?'

Mirrum lowered her eyes. 'No.'

'But you would have liked the choice. No matter.' Sybilla smiled archly, all complacency now. 'I will let you choose other things in the future. You may choose all you like once you are my serving-woman.'

She bent, and lightly brushed the girl's cheek with her own. 'There!' she said gaily, her mood changing like quickfire. 'Remember the way back, _petit revenante_? You should drift through the walls like a ghost. I'll humour your dame for you, never fret. And once she's gone, you'll never miss her. I am not in the habit of belittling my women in front of the whole Court.' She lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. 'I beat them with hairbrushes instead.'

Mirrum wasn't sure if that was another dark jest or the truth. She risked a faint, wraith-like smile, all milk-and-water, and then quickly made her way to the door. Sybilla opened it a fraction to let her out.

Mirrum found herself wishing fervently that the whole Court of Jerusalem _was _nothing but a fanciful, beautiful nightmare of a dream.


	5. Chapter 5

Mirrum didn't know how she found her way back through the puzzle-box construction of the Palace again. Perhaps her feet remembered the journey there, and followed it back mechanically, as the body does, sometimes, whilst the mind is elsewhere. Mirrum's mind was not elsewhere; it was numbed icy-cold with shock. She vaguely registered the soft-blue tiles underfoot and the vaulting of the white stone above her head – but distantly, the colours whirling into a blur that recognised neither up nor down, floor nor ceiling. She was almost reeling when she staggered, limp-legged, back into their narrow, poky little room and fell like one dead to her pallet on the floor.

The room was filled with snores; the dame (and, it has to be confessed,her daughter, for even dainty maidens sometimes snore) were not light sleepers. Mab was a mere hunched shape of bone and sinew against the wall, unmoving. Mirrum was glad. Doubly glad, because had they been awake, there would have been demands for details, explanations – doubtless scoldings too. Mirrum could not bear scoldings – not tonight. She would miss them too much, strange, unnatural as that sounded. All those months of fruitless bickering, of insane swollen pride that she had jarred and chafed against; and now she'd miss it. Miss it. And the grey wastelands of mud and colourless grass that the Dame held sway over in the north – the land where crops rotted in the fields and sheep cropped listlessly at the fleshy green leaves of squelching dandelions. Life, even in the green fields of England, looked nothing like the verdant wonderlands painted in milady's psalter, and the scoldings and countless tussles with the reeve would certainly not be missed…

Until now. And Mab. Poor Mab with his squint-eyes and rough thatch of beard, who had not even wanted to come. He had been so disappointed that all he had seen of the Holy Land so far was a white-washed room and a stable. Not even the right stable.

Sybilla would refuse her nothing now, though. Not now Mirrum had accepted her strange offer. She can help them get passage to Bethlehem, Mirrum thought broodingly. That's the least she can do. And then, once the rest of the letters are penned – they can make their way home by way of Acre. And I shall never see them again…

Mirrum did not cry. She would have liked to, in a distant, vague sort of way; she felt it was expected of her. But she remained stoically dry-eyed and blankly awake throughout the night. The guilt was like a knife between her ribs – because deep down, a treacherous, unrepentant voice was glad this had happened. There was an element of unpredictability in it all now. There was no journey home, no painful crawl across Europe to the mud and byres of home. If this became home – it would be crackling, alive with opportunity and excitement. For all she had not had much choice in the matter…

'Mirrum?' Mab woke first, out of long habit, blinking the crust from his eyes. 'Came back then, I see.' He grunted.

'Yes.'

'They weren't happy. Old 'un seems bothered. Banquet go ill?'

'No more than usual.'

'Oh. That bad?'

'The Dame irritated the Patriarch of Jerusalem, if that counts as bad.' Mirrum thought on the narrow-set, piggy eyes, glittering from the length of his long aquiline nose. 'But he didn't look as if he were a very patient man…'

'Don't do to upset churchmen.'

'No. It doesn't, does it?'

Morning brought with it a second, rather more private meeting for the Dame with the Princess Sybilla. The same disdainful squire (who Mirrum was privately certain was a spy, although whether the Princess' or, perhaps, the Marshals', she had no idea) brought a somewhat supercilious announcement that the Dame and her good daughter were summoned 'to take a walk'. Of course, there was immediately a flutter of both the ladies concerned, and Mirrum had to suffer ten minutes of unrestrained fussing over little things – the crease in a gown, the folds of the Dame's less-than-fresh wimple. That sort of thing. It was only when she dutifully stepped forward to follow three paces behind that the squire stopped her.

'Not you. Them.' He said curtly. 'Wait here.'

'What?' The Dame gaped, a little indignant. 'Your mistress would require me to appear before her _unattended_? What pig-sty of a court is this? Even the North has better manners than this-'

Mirrum for once agreed with her, although for rather different reasons. Curiosity meant she would have dearly loved to know how on earth the Lady Sybilla would coax Mirrum's ownership from the very firm hands of the Dame. But apparently she was to be denied this too. It would hardly have done, she supposed charitably, to be present whilst they talked of her. But it would have been intruiging –

The tense clucking died away almost completely after they had vanished after the squire. Mab stared bewilderedly after them.

'Not much f'r me to do, either. Maybe I should go lodge with the horses,' he said disgustedly. 'I'd get better company, to be sure. I'm only her steward, eh? Take no notice of a _senior_ member of her household like me.'

'They barely tolerate _her_, Mab.'

'Aye, but…'

'Let it alone. There's only three days to go. You'll be home within a dozen heartbeats.' Mirrum said unthinkingly. 'Through Acre and away – back home.'

'_You'll_ be home? _We_, you mean,' Mab retorted. 'Unless you're plannin' to die on the journey home...'

'You.' The squire appeared again. He didn't wrinkle his nose quite so much at Mirrum, although the face he wore was as sour as an unripe apple. 'This way. Now.'

'What?'

'The Lord Marshal,' the squire announced, in the bored, formulaic way of presenting messages that all squires assumed. ' " desires speech with you on the manner of your leave-taking." _Understand?_ Now.'

That was either bitter, and faintly cruel, irony on the Marshal's part, or something had changed in Sybilla's plan. She doubted the latter very much. Sybilla did not strike her as a woman who readily changed her mind, mercurial as she was.

'A convenient excuse, merely.' Tiberias glanced up ,briefly, from a pile of parchment, and then gestured Mirrum to a seat with an irritated wave of his hand. 'How else am I to prise you from your mistress?'

'She is walking with the Lady Sybilla,' Mirrum said bitterly. 'As well as Iveta.'

'S'truth, really? Sybilla ventures much for you, then. I take it she is cosseting the goodly henwife so as to pluck you away,' Tiberias said complacently. 'I cannot say but I am glad, for your sake. And Sybilla's. She seemed rather more _interested_ in you than I anticipated.'

'Oh, _very_ much more.'

'You sound displeased!' Tiberias' eyebrows rose a fraction at the chill note in Mirrum's voice, before suddenly drawing together. 'Tell me, then – what wondrous service is it that you scorn the Lady Sybilla's? A princess, no less, and a person of greater power and influence than a woman who owns three score sheep and a handful of mud-flats.'

'I don't scorn it. I accepted it. It was the manner of asking that-' Mirrum broke off. 'I am a sulky colt, perhaps, for thinking of it,' attempting to laugh, 'but I would have liked to have been allowed to choose. I knew too much to refuse her once she told me all… and I do not think she would have-'

'Let you leave alive?' Tiberias must have guessed from her apprehensive look what she would have said. To her surprise, he snorted derisively. 'Sybilla is ruthless, girl, but not a bloodstained Jezebel. Whilst I'm sure she is quite capable of having a manservant slide a knife between your ribs, she has not the mind for murder. Murder is not for her. For other menials, perhaps, but not for her. If she told you too much – what _did_ she tell you, by the bye?'

Ah. Dangerous ground. 'Of her husband.' Mirrum said evenly.

'Hah! I'll wager she did. Guy is uncomplicated at first glance. You'll learn better; even he has a little cunning that he uses at his own discretion. What business of Guy's concerns Sybilla?'

'My lord… with respect, whose spy am I? Am I the Lady Sybilla's, or yours for the Lady Sybilla?'

'Neither. But we have a common interest, shall we say.' Tiberias' voice hardened a little. 'If she told you of her husband, then she must have told you of her son.'

Mirrum thought of the sleeping tousled head and the shadowed face of Sybilla. 'Yes.'

'Her interest lies in the kingdom, then. As does mine. Only mine lies in serving my King now, not a maybe-king of tomorrow.' Tiberias leaned back in his chair. 'Come, come – I will admit, Sybilla and myself do not always see eye to eye on some subjects, but where Guy is concerned, and the Kingdom…'

'Sybilla's son will be king soon, won't he? 'A few years at most.' That's what she said. A few years.'

'Perhaps _for_ a very few years.' Tiberias said grimly. 'If Guy has his way. Anticipate his moves now, and he loses power, and Sybilla may yet keep her son on the throne.'

Mirrum folded her hands in her lap, decided. 'Letters. At odd hours, written so she cannot read them, and delivered privately to her steward.'

'And?'

'I read only a little last night, my lord. The light was poor, and I saw them only for an instant, but the numbers –' Mirrum's hands itched about themselves like spiders. 'The numbers are wrong, my lord. In his letter to her, he writes that there are fifty knights new from the Loire arrived in Acre.'

Tiberias' eyes were suddenly very much darker. 'How many more in the letter to the steward?' he said abruptly. 'I can guess the end of this. How many?'

'I only saw the number, little else – I am a halting student at Greek!' Mirrum pleaded. 'But the number was closer to eight and seventy than fifty in his letter to his steward. And he is not at Acre now.'

Tiberias hissed between his teeth. The noise startled Mirrum; it was such a feral, alien sound… But Tiberias stood up abruptly, cursing softly and vehemently in Norman-French under his breath.

'The bastard…'

'My lord?'

'Was there anything else? No – forget that. As you say, you only saw it an instant. Sybilla was doubtless cautious. Lord of Hosts! Eight and seventy! If he writes that there's only fifty…War-mongrel. _Breeding_ excuse for war.'

Mirrum judiciously ignored this, pretending to be very interested in the stiff squire standing at the door.

'Good!' Tiberias snapped his fingers at Mirrum. 'Hear me, girl? Very good! You shall be admirable at your service with the Lady Sybilla. A perfect dissembler. Have you spoken to her of this?'

'There was no opportunity last night. And I have not seen her this morning.'

'You'll have your fill of her company before long, I shouldn't wonder. Sybilla is a pleasant woman in her fashion, but I find her a little difficult to follow...'

'Ah!' Tiberias' hatchet of a face broke into a smile at the brief, expressive flash that had glanced across Mirrum's face. She had thought it went undetected; alas for her. 'I see! You have me down as a bitter, cynical bachelor, soured by life in the saddle, and an incurable misanthrope into the bargain.'

The humiliation was awful.

'Oh, make no apologies.I am flattered.' Tiberias sat back, a weary malcontent once more. 'My reputation does me a world of good, in many ways. It means no-one expects anything of me.Generally I oblige them by not giving them any hint I have a slight inclination towards mercy.' He turned his attention to the papers in front of him, coughing slightly. The squire stood to attention at once. 'You may go.' He said loudly. 'Now I know what way your mistress takes.'

Mirrum bobbed, bowed, and then scuttled out, glad of the prompt dismissal, and carefully following in the path of the squire. They were all a little indistinguishable to Mirrum, in their blue surcoats and liveried coats of arms; but this one seemed less affronted than the arrogant acquaintance of the previous night, and slightly more inclined to be friendly.

'Changing masters?' he enquired. 'No bad thing, I suppose. I'm to take _you_ to the private rooms of the Lady Sybilla. You're not to go back.'

Mirrum's stomach somersaulted. 'My things-'

'Your bundle's there, if that's what you wanted. You'll not keep your homespun, though. You're a tiring woman. They wear dark linens. _Homespun_ would disgrace the name of the Court.'

'I have letters to-'

'The Lady Sybilla saw to that.'

'But… but _Mab_…'

'The _steward_? Daresay he'll know by now.' The squire seemed absolutely unmoved by it all. Perhaps it was wicked to dislike someone instantly, but Mirrum hated him almost in a moment, worse by far than the disdainful one. 'They accepted readily enough. Anything to oblige a _princess_. Expect _they_ never saw one before – Are you crying?'

'No!'

The rest of the journey passed in unprofitable silence. If Mirrum had truly posessed the power of witchcraft, and could simply murder by thought, then it is doubtful whether the squire would have lived beyond a few minutes. But he brought her there in thick, tnesion filled silence, and after rapping respectfully on the door with his knuckles, left Mirrum alone to her new mistress.

'_Petit revenante!'_ A cloud of musk enveloped the air, haunting as a fragrance. Sybilla looked very much the same as yesterday; only she had replaced the heavenly seraphims wings of orange silk with a loose sea-green robe that rippled to her feet. And there was a certain air of arch triumph that was strengthened in her. '_**Ma**__ petit revenante_ now, I am glad to say,' she added gleefully. 'Your Dame had me prepared for a great battle for you! You would think she would huff and puff? But no! A little sweetness, a few sugared compliments, and she melts like beeswax. Plus, I must say, a good deal of bribery. Come, I have been more than generous. A purse of silver loosens most loyalties, and I put my own name to the letter of safe-passage. A bishop and a princess' blessing should be enough for any monastery to open their arms to them. News from the Holy Land is much prized.'

'They'll do well?' Mirrum said anxiously. Much as she'd despised them, they were… gone.

'To Bethlehem.' Sybilla read Mirrum's look. 'First, as we agreed. And then on to Acre. You will miss them?'

Mirrum had a lump in her throat. It choked her horribly, like an ache behind the eyes. 'Yes.'

Sybilla did the odd, fluttering motion with her two painted fingers, making them dance gently over Mirrum's shock of colourless hair, before coaxing her new acquisition inside. 'You are loyal. That is only to be expected.' She said kindly, her disconcerting pale-blue eyes softening a little. But then, in another swift, bird-like movement of her head – the pensive mood was gone, replaced by a brisk 'Come! Meet the rest of my household!!'


	6. Chapter 6

The Household of the Lady Sybilla was one that deserved a capital letter. Sybilla's retinue was very different from the 'daughter and drudges' number of the doughty Dame. There were cooks – one lordly cook, and one meek under-cook, who travelled about wherever she went. There was a shy, dark-eyed girl with long black tresses, whose name was Ammet, and who attired Sybilla and combed her hair – Sybilla's only tiring woman proper, but a jealous and ardent worshipper at the feet of the sandalwood scented goddess who they now served. And there were two score waiting women who drifted about like dark wraiths with needles stuck in their belts and fine drawn muslin work in their hands; they who made up Sybilla's silken creations. And Sybilla had a small, private army of mailed men-at-arms with hawk-like faces who rode swathed in crimson cloth and banners, as well as the ability to command anyone in the Palace with the slightest inclination of her pretty head…

Mirrum did not have much chance for analysis of Sybilla – the public Sybilla of pomp and circumstance- to tell truth. The nature of her work was, after all, a secret one. Sybilla declared loudly to everyone about that Mirrum was her little scholar, fresh from the nunneries of the north, and who had an ear for French poetry. 

Life was so very different…

Mirrum had a soft, powder blue garment of serviceable coarse muslin, the exact colour of the squires' tabards. She half expected the broidered insignia of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, it was so similar a shade. As though even the servants were part and parcel of the city's defences. And, coupled with a linen cotte made of so fine a linen it shone cobweb white, Mirrum felt suddenly miles above a 'byre girl'. As though, like Mab had thought, she were grazing the sky with the fluttering angels in Paradise itself.

Of course, duty took a great part of it, too, but that made it all the more like another sort of Heaven. Mirrum had a small, discreet little desk in her tiny honeycomb of a room, a few paces away from Sybilla's apartments, where, with ink, paper, and pages of pilfered correspondence, Mirrum set about deciphering the mysterious Greek, using her shameful literacy for hours upon end.

But whilst being able to read, without fear for once in her somewhat short life, the hours alone with the curt, almost smugly satisfied letters inscribed 'to mine honoured wyfe' made Mirrum take quite an unreasonable dislike to my Lord Guy. Whilst it is faintly unreasonable to dislike someone on the basis of their letters, the way he flicked out an 'e' made Mirrum see arrogance in every spatter of ink on his letters. He dashed off the formalities of greeting and fond leave-taking as though he could hardly care less about how he wrote to his wife. Whilst the stewards letters that she spent so much care and toil on, translating the phrases – they were smug. They were insulting to Sybilla, for certain – and there were things in them that Mirrum did not let herself think about too deeply or too much. This was politics. You didn't read politics more than you could help.

And it was not all toil, for sure. Mirrum presented the translations at the close of day to Sybilla. It was a ritual like that of a high priestess, perhaps – Sybilla gravely read, memorised, and then burnt away Mirrum's hours of painstaking copying as though submitting burnt offerings in the Temple of Solomon.

'One cannot be too careful,' she remarked. 'Especially since we both know, first hand, how easily letters can be spirited away.' She looked up from the fire, curiosity settling a second flame in her eyes. 'Tell me, petite revenante – what picture do you glean of my husband from that? A true one? Or do you perhaps think he is justified in hiding the business of war from his wife? After all – perhaps it is none of my business what he does with his knights.'

'It concerns the Kingdom, doesn't it? Not just what is between husband and wife. My lady.'

'A little politic observer already?' Sybilla smiled, faintly, and then thoughtfully dragged a comb through her hair. Ammet, flitting around like a wraith herself, had long since taken herself off to a corner, where she watched with wide, dark eyes. '_Maryam_, you do not grow dull on closer acquaintance, I can assure you. I wonder what you will become after years at Court.' When she used Mirrum's name now, she pronounced it the Arabic way, giving it a soft, plaintive note that it had not possessed before. Mirrum rather liked it; Sybilla seemed to adopt her closer tiring women like sisters. Albeit highly obedient, unquestioning sisters; one was not too free with Sybilla. But it became easier to read her moods.

'A proper lady-in-waiting, perhaps?' Mirrum was watching the remnants of the parchment crackle and blacken into ash, her small, egg-shaped face resting pensively between her cupped hands. This was the real Sybilla, the one at ease who warmed her hands by the little copper brazier and ate fruit with a funny, feline movement, licking her fingers with a touch of childish simplicity. 

'A proper one? You make a tolerable one as it is, _petite revenante_…'

'I mean – I mean I should be better used to everything as it is, my lady. Not stumbling everywhere I go…'

Ammet laughed shrilly from her corner, her eyes shining with amusement as she let loose a tumble of swift-flowing Arabic in Sybilla's direction, nodding briefly at Mirrum. Sybilla laughed in turn.

'She says you are like a colt with too many legs.'

Mirrum's face had a less placid expression at that; she disliked her clumsiness, especially when it was so painfully obvious. But clearly Sybilla didn't mind; she chortled as if it were a subtle joke well told, and then turned away, yawning like the cat-like creature she was, to ready herself for bed.

And that was life at the Court, for three months of strangeness and two months of growing, almost endearing, familiarity. There were not always letters to translate; their coming and going was, at best, sporadic. And Sybilla strove to make Mirrum what she said she was; she taught her French poetry, lays from Marie de France, old, plaintive Breton ballads – and even a melancholic song, clear and strange as running water, from Ammet's tongue. But that was only in the firelit companionship of the night, when the boundaries seemed to seep into the dark. During the day everyone slipped into their habitual roles of mistress and servant, and kept to them. 

Or… well, those that needed to kept to them, at least. Sometimes. Those who did not crossed over rather more easily.

Mirrum had seen very little of that mysterious son of Sybilla's – the grave, sleeping child who had looked like a marble effigy. Sybilla was protective; he never strayed from her apartments save for the little schooling Sybilla – and Sybilla alone – gave to him. Mirrum wondered, remembering her own, rather lonely childhood, sometimes wondered how different it was to be nobly born and alone, rather than a byre child and alone. And, if there was any difference, whether it amounted to much in the end. After all, the important word was 'alone…'

Mirrum yawned, arching her aching back. She had finished the last crabbed letter, turning the Greek into English just as the letters began to dance on the page like a swarm of buzzing insects. It did ill to let your thoughts wander in translation; the hand sometimes fell in line with the idle thoughts of the mind rather than the task at hand. Yet the wretched thing was finished, at last… 

Mirrum, for some strange reason outside her comprehension, felt no desire to talk lightly of nothings by the fire at the present. She was restless, her palms itching with the dullness of having nothing to do, and nowhere, truly, where she could be at home. She slid from her desk with a wince, and then slipped from her room as though she were indeed the little ghost that Sybilla had playfully named her. 

The casual reader may well think this rather churlish ingratitude in Mirrum, to tire so easily within a six-month of her newly raised sphere of life. And perhaps it was; but then, as Mirrum had thought so often to herself in the early days; she hadn't been given a choice. She was here, and it must be enjoyed as best she could – and there was plenty to look at and think about. But the narrow life locked up in Sybilla's apartments – no, that she did not enjoy.

Which was why Mirrum had fixed on a rather unusual way of… transgressing, on this particular night. A small rebellion, but one that was absolutely hers. 

If you walked through the cool white-halled portico that led to the apartments of Sybilla, there was a fret-worked wall of alabaster that allowed you to peer, through the extravagant whorls and spirals, into a garden. It looked rather dusty and forgotten, unlike the formal gardens in the more frequented parts of the palace – a tattered, long-forgotten pavilion hung there that someone hadn't remembered to take down – bleached by the sun and stained by the rare fits of rain that sometimes blessed Jerusalem. If you stood on tiptoe – the very, utmost tiptoe, you could make out plants, and flowers – mingled with riotous weeds, though, and the paving-stones bathed in a layer of that grey gritty dust that blew always throughout the city. And a choked up fountain, that sluggishly played a faint trickle of water. Like one of those forgotten castles in the legends of Arthur that awaited rescue. It was so lovely and so haunted a place that Mirrum had felt all about the fretwork with eager hands, trying to find the way in. But the way, if there was one, remained securely hidden. 

Still, Mirrum was not without resources. She was, after all, a rather uncomplicated byre girl, and for all the fragile beauty of the fret worked walls, it was infinitely climbable.

I shall not illustrate the undignified, rough-and-tumble process of climbing that Mirrum undertook, with one leg hooked farcically over the top of the wall like a great pale spider. But it was like an act against the Court that the Dame admired and she, Mirrum, had not wanted-

'There!'

A great, gangling jump and Mirrum landed rocking on her feet in the little patch of neglected Paradise, gasping with exertion and nerves together. Although her breath choked in her throat as she looked up to survey her surroundings.

She was not alone to explore as she had hoped. The little waxen princeling was kneeling by the fountain dabbling his hands in the water, his look almost as guilty as her own. 

'Lord forgive me I am so sorry for-'

Sybilla's son cocked his head on one side – although more gravely than his mother's quick little nods.

'You can climb.' He said seriously.

Mirrum stopped mid-gabble, to crouch down, chin on hands. A simple, intelligent little creature was the prince; she felt an instinctive impulse to like him. And he didn't seem about to cry out at the unorthodox intrusion. 'Yes.' She replied, just as seriously as he had asked. 'I can climb.'

Baldwin turned his head nervously from left to right, as though fearful of discovery any minute, and then ducked his head. 'I can, too,' he hissed, cautiously, displaying a grazed knee. 'I'm not supposed to go here, though. No-one is.'

'Not even you? You're a prince.' Mirrum was surprised

'Ye-es...' Baldwin spoke doubtfully. 'But I'm not allowed here._ Maman_ would be angry with me for playing here. It's too close-'

'Too close? To what?'

The boy eyed Mirrum, looking her up and down with a conspiratorial air. Yes, it said. You've come over the wall too. We're fellow plotters, you and I. And there seemed to be something in Mirrum's flushed face and scuffed clothes that appealed to him as an ally; not a drifting lady-in-waiting with a scornful face.

'You don't call me 'my lord.'' he said bluntly, plucking idly at a piece of grass sprouting from between paving-stones. 'That's alright. I don't mind. Ammet wouldn't tell me what it is, and when I asked _Maman_ she slapped Ammet and wouldn't say…'

He broke into the furtive whispering again. 'I think there's a dragon here, you know-' he hissed. 'It lives in the fountain and preys on ships that pass its way. Like the great sea-serpent Maman told me of that would have eaten a princess chained to a rock – only a great knight-errant came to save her.'

'Perseus?'

'Yes! Only we must be very, very quiet here, in case the sea-serpent and the Medusa hear us. She hides in the flapping of the pavilion, you know.' The little son of Sybilla confided, with the air of a leader of men. 'That's not really the silk; that's the hissing of her monstrous hair…'

'Mm.' Mirrum nodded agreement. 'We must be deadly quiet, then, noble princeling. May I be your squire and carry your magic helm whilst you prepare for battle?'

Mirrum _liked_ games. It must have showed in her face that she was a sympathetic player in the world of fantastic imagination, for Baldwin's small face instantly fell into the gravely intent look of utterly serious enjoyment. Both of them were speaking as though it were some religious ritual rather than harmless play.

'Be careful!' he whispered, urgently, as he solemnly handed her an 'invisible' helm. 'You aren't protected as I am with the magic of the gods, you know. You might get hurt.'

Mirrum took it with quite as much gravity, and after assuring him that she would 'be careful,' proceeded to begin the stalking game in the grass with every sign of delight.

She had been right. There was perhaps not such a sad little creature as Sybilla's son in existence. He was rather too aware of being a king-in-waiting, in a vaguely troubled way –his mother's hopes seemed fixed to him like a pinioned butterfly – pinning him down into a shape and place he did not truly want, and had not – really – asked for. But the snatched moments of honest childhood that he had in the hidden courtyard seemed real enough.

'No-one can hear you in here, you know.' He confided, sitting with spindly legs dangling on one side of the fountain. 'I wait until _Maman_ is at feast before I come here. No-one so much as lights the torches then until she makes her way back.'

'You play in the dark?'

'Until dusk.' Baldwin's slight, childish face suddenly twitched; went nervous. 'In case _Maman_ finds I'm gone.'

There was a moment of mutual realisation, like a torrent of cold water poured over both their heads at once, that the shadows on the cracked paving stones were suddenly much longer than they should have been. 

'We should go –

'Do you think Maman will have missed me?'

'I doubt it, Prince Perseus. But we should go _now._ Before she does.'

'She'll whip me if she does.' Baldwin sounded momentarily rueful, but in a childish, philosophical way. He brightened. 'Prince Perseus? I like that…'

Mirrum looked down at the grass-stains and damp patches on her gown and wondered how she could lie about that.

There was one thing to say about Sybilla's son, however – he was a nimble climber. Mirrum graciously gave him a foot up, holding her cupped palms as a second step as though he were mounting an Arab warhorse, and then with a gangling impetus of frantic climbing, he swung his legs over and prepared to drop-

Only to freeze at the sound of rapidly approaching voices. His mother's voice, still a way off, but proceeding rapidly down the cloister like an avenging angel, could be heard, speaking irritably in quick fire Arabic.

Capture seemed unavoidable. He crouched there, trembling like a rabbit.

'_Maman!'_

'Drop down!' Mirrum hissed, one eye pressed fearfully to the fretwork. Sybilla, she thought, would not be pleased at the meeting of her spy and her son, or at the trespass into forbidden territory. 'It's not too late. Drop down now and she won't suspect.'

'But she'll catch you as you climb over the wall-'

'I'll wait here. If I don't climb over yet, you'll avoid a whipping, Prince Perseus.' Mirrum gave a brief grin and gave him a gentle push. 'Go on now! Quick!'

With a sprawling of tangled arms and legs, he jumped, landing with a roll and a gasp just as Sybilla began to turn the corner…

'Child!'

Mirrum ducked down, lying flat on the ground with her arms outstretched, eyes squeezed tightly shut. There was an element of strange enjoyment in it all, the danger – the strange, vaguely exciting knowledge that after months of dutiful obedience, learning the rituals and the customs of a Jerusalem she increasingly grew to recognise as unfamiliar – she could disobey, and run the risk of being caught…

Baldwin, on the other side of the wall, guiltily straightened up, eyes frightened; had she seen the leap? Prince Perseus went quite trembling when expecting chastisement from his lady mother, who had a temper that a thousand Gorgons could not have reckoned with. The little waxen effigy of a prince melted all at once into the child he really was.

'I fell.' He said forlornly, expecting at any minute the snap of scarlet silk as Sybilla drew back her palmed hand –

But the expected slap for disobedience did not come. Sybilla uttered a brief exclamation and rushed towards her son, anxiously feeling his forehead. 'Are you well? You look flushed –' she cast a reproachful glance at Ammet of the dark eyes, who shied away. Sybilla blamed anyone and anything if the hint of neglect touched her son. 'I pray this is no fever,' she said pointedly, looking at Ammet. 'How did you fall, _mon petit_? Tell _Maman_?'

'I –I was running…' It wasn't exactly a lie; Mirrum and he had indeed been running like mad creatures about the courtyard where they must not go. 'And then I fell.'

Sybilla looked sharply at him; perhaps she sensed the hesitancy in her little son's voice. But there was another emotion altogether when she took his hand, anxiously looking him over with a muted terror neither her son, nor Mirrum, flat on her stomach on the other side, could place.

'_Has he hurt himself?' _Ammet asked gently. '_Sometimes children hurt themselves without knowing it –'_ Sybilla snapped at her, a sudden wild stream of violent curses springing from her lips as she rounded on Ammet like a tigress. It was as though Ammet had spoken some dreadful heresy.

Mirrum had a little Arabic now; snippets, gleaned ears of learning. She could sift the grains of the foreign tongue and understand what Sybilla snarled.

'_Mention that in my presence again, and I shall leave you for the dogs at the David Gate! You mention that! To me! Concerning my son!'_

'_Forgive me, my lady, I meant no disrespect-'_ Poor Ammet. She threw up her hands, terror gleaming in her eloquent dark eyes.

'I only stumbled, Maman,' Baldwin ventured, 'It didn't hurt –'

'You didn't hurt yourself, then? You are _sure,__mon petit_?' Sybilla's voice was hard, harder than perhaps she meant – for she saw her son's face crumple and flung herself forward with a gasp, trying to turn it into a reassuring laugh. The pretence failed miserably; the laugh faltered and choked in her throat like a dying kitten.

'There, there _mon petit_! Maman is not angry, no, no… Not at anything you did.' Over her son's spindly shoulder Sybilla glared daggers at the helpless Ammet. '_So much as breathe the name of the sickness again, and-'_

'_I did not mean that, my lady.__You know I did not! Only my brothers forever were tumbling over and grazing themselves and forgetting and-'_

'_Enough. _Now, mon petit – we shall go and take the dust from your clothes, and then, if you like – Maman shall tell you more of France. Would you like that? And of England, and so many, many places. You must know these things, you know…'

The voices were already retreating down the passageway. Mirrum noticed, cautiously opening one eye, that as the little Prince Perseus went away with his mother, he stuck one pink hand through the fretwork to wave at his fellow rebel with every evidence of gratitude; the whipping, if there was going to be one, would not be for him.

Probably for Ammet, Mirrum thought ruefully, getting up from her uncomfortable position on the bare earth. Sybilla was like a storm in a heaven of sandalwood scent – beautiful, unpredictable, hot-tempered as a spiced wind. Ah well. Enough adventuring for one day…It was a pity she would never see Prince Perseus again. It was not likely, after the fright of today that either of them would venture back again quickly.

Mirrum raised one foot to begin the ascent –

'Make light! Torches for the Lady Sybilla!'

And flung herself clumsily to the ground again, her cheek sending up a puff of dry dust as half a dozen torchbearers scurried about the cloisters with lighted tapers and torches. Clearly tonight was no ordinary banquet. It must be an unusually impressive feast. Perhaps the mysterious monarch would deign to appear before the multitude, Mirrum thought irritably. Damn him. Did the occasion have to be tonight? Mirrum would no doubt be missed. And with so many servants scuttling about like demented blue-clad ants, there was a strong chance of Mirrum having to spend a sleepless night within the forbidden courtyard itself…

Resigning herself to the inevitable, Mirrum, with much wincing from her second encounter with the dirt, stood up and wandered over to the fountain. It was not as graceful as the others – or at least, the ones within the precincts of the Palace. They sprouted like pale mushrooms of marble and trickling water – as though it were quite natural for them to grow there. This one was old red stone, with a carving much defaced by the constant passage of water. It held up withered arms in the very centre, like a pleading sinner begging for redemption as the water imperturbably flowed on.

Mirrum rather gloomily considered her chances of making a run for it, leaping over the wall, and appearing fresh-faced, prompt, and with ready excuse to wait on Sybilla – and snorted, after first saying a blunt word in (alas, unrepeatable) Anglo Saxon, pulling off her battered shoes with a wince. She said it again, just for good measure, before letting her feet drift in the water. It was cool, and pleasant for now, although her conscience would be plagued with this particular sin for some time. It wasn't even the sort of thing one could be decently shrived from, even God. Kings were God, weren't they? His representative, for good or bad? Whether He approved or not -

It was at this point, for Mirrum, that the world turned an abrupt somersault over and under anything she expected at this point. Whether spurred on by her idle train of thought, if heaven can have such an ironic sense of humour or the generosity of providence, who knows? – Her alert ears caught the dreaded sound of a voice, seemingly falling from the endless sky like a remark from the Lord of Hosts Himself.

'You will have wetted feet,' it said mildly.


	7. Chapter 7

Mirrum's soul shrank in horror. She wildly cast her eyes around about her, looking perhaps for some accuser who had nonetheless caught the colour of her dress in the dim twilight, some mocking face pressed against the carvings of the alabaster walls like a malicious Puck…

But all the elaborately carved flowers showed pinpricks of clear, unobstructed light– no sign of anyone, no dark outline of an intruder. Save for the ever-present guard against the wall. Mirrum's breath caught in her throat, lest it should be _he_ who had seen her…

But the helmeted man-at-arms' shoulders were slumped, his body slack in the loose-limbed droop of sleep. There is no feigning the _real_ thing. Besides, the voice had not come from below. It had fallen lightly from above…

And there was nothing above but the widespread blanket of stars…

'_Deus!_' Mirrum's soul shrank a second time within her miserable skin, only this time with the white-hot realisation that could be nothing above but what was feared most. Judgement.

She broke at once into the _Miserere_, the words hotly clustering together inside her head and slewing into each other until the Latin became an undignified rush of words, stumbling and falling headlong over the unfamiliar syllables.

'_Miserere mei, Deus; secundum magnam misericordiam tuam…'_

There was a pause, as Mirrum ran out of breath and subsided into panicked gulps of air. It could have filled oceans.

There was another pause, punctuated by a slight thread of unfamiliar sound. Mirrum was quite at a loss to tell what it was, until…

The heavenly messenger was laughing. Slightly, and with a touch of wry self-knowledge, but most definitely…

Mirrum was bewildered.

'That,' the voice said clearly, once again, 'Is at once a flattering, and a rather alarming, mistake. Forgive me for disillusioning you, but I am rather _resolutely_, I am afraid – mortal.'

It was a peculiar voice. Pleasantly low; and speaking impeccable French, yet at times the intonation sounded a little laboured, as though the thoughts came faster than the words. It was like hearing the sound of a bolt of velvet unroll on the air itself. One _could_ easily believe an angel might speak like that.

'You are not a divine messenger?' Mirrum could not help but sound relieved; the frightening, dizzying thought that a God might deign to use His voice to speak to her at a moment of somewhat awkward sin had petrified her.

Of course, there was the other, more troubling thought that the voice equally must know her transgression as easily as the Lord of Hosts, if he could see her grass-stained and dirty in the forgotten Eden.

'No.' The voice said gently. 'No.'

'Lord be praised!' Mirrum said fervently, brushing the dirt from the knees of her gown.

There was another faint ripple of laughter from above.'You are very eager to avoid the attention of Heaven. And of lesser beings, it seems,' it added, no doubt noticing that Mirrum was anxiously casting about with nervous eyes for the speaker. And not finding him. 'You need have no fear, I shall not betray your secret.'

'It is not truly very much of one,' Mirrum confessed ruefully, her pale face twitching into a slight smile.

It is necessary to explain why Mirrum did not immediately hare off, relieved, terrified and contrite all at once. Another (perhaps wiser girl) would have done so immediately, without thought of the consequences, and would have lived an unremarkable life as serving-maid henceforth. But there is an old Latin proverb that says, 'that which is unknown is enchanting', and Mirrum would have made an excellent illustration of the point. She was fascinated, to the extent that she would say anything in order to prolong the conversation. Voices from above felt like something extraordinary, something from the Jerusalem Mab had envisaged. Angels like so many pigeons fluttering idly about.

'You are _quite_ sure you are human? Because I cannot for the life of me see anything of you…'

'You are looking in the wrong place. Up.'

Mirrum dutifully craned her head towards the sky; still – a very little – nervous about whether or not there would be a fiery-eyed angel with scarlet wings perched on the roof tiles. Nothing, nothing…

Ah.

Imagine, against the fading brilliance of clear twilight, a flickering light. As Mirrum's eyes strain in the half-dark of below, it becomes a brazier, the smoke rising from it in a thin sliver of vapour, and thence, just in front of the light so very far above her head, is-

The shape of a head and shoulders, looking down. Nothing more. It is too dark, and the light behind the figure robs it of any form, so the face, the features – all are lost in the dark and the fantastic shadow-play of light and utter dark that leaves Mirrum little wiser than before. The set of the head is dignified, she thinks – perhaps. Its movements are slow, shrouded. But the carriage of the head, even leaning down across the balustrade, at so great a distance, seems quiet, but powerful. A scholar's stance. Mirrum knows it well from her schooling in monasteries, and respects it for what it is – as he said. Resolutely human. But still a silhouette.

'I see you,' she called, her voice carrying a thin handful of words up to her watcher. 'And you say you won't betray me, you who I still cannot see? Who are you?'

'Ah…' the voice said ruefully. 'Knowledge. Forbidden fruit. Let us say, for now – I am an observer, like you. An intelligent observer.'

'What makes you think I have wit?'

'Come, false modesty! It took wit to find the garden.' The voice said simply. 'Most courtiers do not give it a second glance, though they pass it every day of their life. It takes a sharp eye to see it. And you _are_ intelligent, in that – whilst there are many, many serving women_… I have yet to see another who plays at old Greek legend with a princeling.'_

Mirrum froze. 'You saw.'

'I was piqued, if you like,' the voice remarked dryly. 'Entertained, certainly. And, since you would have an answer to your question, I propose we come to terms over it amicably. Three questions in turn.'

Mirrum cocked her head on one side, unconsciously imitating Sybilla's feline movements as she considered the proposal. 'On what?' she said cautiously.

'Tush! If you will not play, then I shall withdraw offended.' The voice said lightly. 'You have my sworn oath of silence. Are questions such dangerous matter?'

Well – _yes_, Mirrum thought. Very. Questions were what Sybilla feared, after all – questions on the letters, discovery, unpleasant scenes, hasty letters, horse's hooves flying in the dust – Betrayal. Lies. Whoever the eccentric scholar was, he had an unnerving habit of playing Mephistopheles. But… an observer. Like you. An observer. An _intelligent _observer.

Mirrum stood up, screwing her courage into a tight ball of nerves. There was one sure way to tell, after all. If the watcher was a spy of the unsavoury Lord Guy, then the words should stick in his throat.

'Are you loyal to the Royal House?' she asked, cautiously. 'To the King? As I am?' she added, defiantly. Just in case.

'I would venture to say,' the voice said gravely, after a thoughtful pause, 'that disloyalty to the King is as impossible as disloyalty to myself.'

The ball of nerves unclenched itself a little. A great deal, to be honest. Mirrum didn't really think much of the idea of a poisonous traitor dogging her footsteps, but this was foreign ground – and she had read far too many of the white monks' poisonous chronicles of the corruption of court life to venture into anything without thought.

'Alright,' she said bravely. 'First question – are you a member of the Royal Household?'

'Quite _certainly_.' There was a hint of a smile in the voice. 'My question. Do you hail from the lands of Germany? Your French has an accent I cannot place…'

'England. Not Germany – although my grandsire was a Dane.' Mirrum curtseyed, ironically. 'Second question: how do you know of the garden?'

'Ah. That one is easy. These apartments, Dane-lady, overlook the garden. How can you miss what is always there?' The smile was no longer merely a hint; in the voice the tone of enjoyment was positively infectious. 'I like riddles. How long have you been at Court?'

'Five months and a handful of days.' Mirrum gingerly stepped out of the bowl of the fountain in a shower of cold droplets. Grace was something for other people to possess, never Mirrum, and as a result she splashed like an ungainly duckling, looking like anything but a Dane-lady. 'If you haven't seen me,' she said, almost to herself, 'It's because I'm not really here. I'm a _petite revenante_. My Lady Sybilla calls me that.' She thought about this. It wasn't hard to see why. Mirrum might be pale as a English winter, but one of the qualities Sybilla doubtless liked about her was she was – serviceable. Meek, unobtrusive, the sort of person you could pass without a second glance. Like a corn doll. And she looked more like a kitchen slattern than a lady-in-waiting. No one to be trusted with important, secret matters like translating the dubious instructions of my Lord Guy…

Fortunately this all flashed behind Mirrum's eyes rather than aloud. However, it is by no means certain that the stiff figure above her did not read it simply by her face. A sharp movement of the shrouded head indicated that the scholar studied faces as well as books. But the movement subsided into a courteous inclination as Mirrum looked up again. 'I should be a little more courtly by now,' she said regretfully. 'I am not.'

'That is an honest answer.' The voice sounded interested, a little piqued, perhaps, at the strange little creature with old eyes below. 'A frank one, too. But then I would hardly believe you if you had told me you were filled with ah – _courtly_ cynicism. You deserve a generous answer to your third question. Whatever that may be.'

The sunlight had all but vanished now. Mirrum had to squint to see even the outline of her mysterious companion. The weak, dancing light of the passages beyond the walls gave her no help…

'Torches! Torches for my lord!'

Mirrum yelped and threw herself face down in the dust again as booted feet strode past – a large retinue this time. Some late-comer to the Royal Feast, perhaps.

They mercifully hurried quickly away.

'They will not look, you know.' The voice said calmly, when the footsteps were a distant memory in the labyrinth of passages. 'They never do. That is why your young friend – pardon me – was there in broad daylight.' The tranquillity, like the odd, dry humour, had a way of infusing the air. 'And they are bound for the feasting tonight – a great one, so I hear.' It added, neutrally. 'In celebration.'

Mirrum rose cautiously to a half-crouch, no longer lying headlong in the dirt. She had ducked as though arrow-bolts hissed overhead – much, she strongly suspected, to the amusement of the voice. 'An important one?' she asked, uneasily. 'I think that must be my final question. I should be waiting on the Lady Sybilla…'

'She would not thank you for your attendance tonight, I think,' the voice said slowly. 'And even if she expected you, on occasions such as this, she prefers to encounter the – guest of honour, shall we say – alone.'

'I thought as much.' Mirrum said glumly, looking every inch a dejected wraith-girl 'The King himself, I shouldn't wonder. Probably back from a great hunt.' She added, importantly, to show she knew a little of the manner of kings. 'Or some great business of state. I shall be flayed for my absence…'

There was a small, breathy sound from above. The voice went suddenly, quite abruptly silent.

'Are you there?' Mirrum said anxiously, shifting from foot to foot. She did not want to be left alone with her skittering nerves and a darkly silent garden.

'What? Oh. Yes. The King goes hunting?' the voice enquired. There was a careful lack of expression in the voice. 'I was not aware that he was quite so…active.'

'Kings always hunt,' Mirrum said firmly. 'I've read about it. And they have fair hair and they powder their beards with the scent of honeysuckle.'

The laughter did not ripple this time. It positively exploded, with a hollow sound that quite alarmed Mirrum. Had she not been quite assured the voice was human, she would have said it was _unearthly_.

'Ah-aha – forgive me, I did not mean to be mocking…'the voice said, at last. '_Honeysuckle?_ Is that the fashion in England?'

Mirrum looked a little defensive. 'It is what I have read in the chronicles,' she said insistently. 'The monks say it is Norman vanity that tarnishes the soul, and for every curl-'

'Doubtless they will burn in hell. Monks are keen to remind us of the Pit, to keep us on the path of righteousness. That will keep me entertained for some time, Dane lady. I must remember that – powdering their beards… dear me…I would not say that to anyone else,' it added, as an afterthought. 'Your mistress would not take kindly to it and might see it as an insult.'

'It is not the fashion of the King of Jerusalem?'

'No. No, I think not,' the voice said kindly, after a tranquil pause. ' The joke, I think, would not be appreciated by many apart from myself. And he is not at table. The feast is for the Lord Guy de Lusignan newly returned from Acre…'

Mirrum's face went ashen. 'Lords of Hell!'

'I must agree with you,' the voice said soberly. 'You are not so uncourtly after all.'

'I-I must go…' Mirrum listened, agonised, for voices in the cloister, and then made a determined spring for her discarded shoes. She looked straight upwards again, suddenly dismayed. 'Thank you, sir – sir…that should have been what my last question was! What your name is!'

'Keep the question, then,' the voice said amiably. 'As a parting gift. It will keep.'

'But your name! What if…'

'I shall wager I shall discover yours before you find mine,' the voice said quietly, a faint movement of the head discovering his place in the darkness. 'If you return to play at Greek legend, or to take a twilight walk – well, perhaps we may talk again.'

Mirrum had at first been set on never returning, ever. But she nodded now. 'I would like that.' She said, fumbling with her battered leather shoes, before straightening and making a sally for the wall she had climbed. She did not dare look back – one, two, foothold to the side, one leg over –and a wild jump downwards that resulted in a less dignified sprawl than the young prince's.

Safe. Dirty, grass-stained, and unpresentable as she was, Mirrum had nonetheless made it undetected. But she did, remembering Prince 'Perseus' and his gesture of grateful loyalty, put her hand to the elaborate wall and make her farewells.


	8. Chapter 8

The banquet languished. As ever. It was a great pity that Holy Pilgrimage seemed only to attract bores and bigots – or the more earnest type of younger son, with a worrying zeal for promotion by slaughter. The table would have been more suited to funeral baked meats than celebration – a black pall was already cast on the see-saw of uneasy diplomacy. Sybilla sat warily at the head of the table, splendid in her orange taffeta angel's wings once more. She kept the peace well. Some unjudicious steward had arranged matters so the Patriarch was seated between Lord Guy and the Marshal, and with Lord Heraclius' self-complacency and toad-like dignity… Sybilla's eyes were forever flickering warningly from one lord to the other like the mute appeal of a carved saint, imploring forbearance. But then again, whenever her gaze came to rest on her husband – the look did not implore. It recoiled as though it had come to rest on a serpent, which, for now, she must smile for and excuse.

Tiberias, through some reluctant sense of loyalty, forbore from quarrelling at table with Guy. If only for the Lady Sybilla's sake. He stared misanthropically into the wine pitcher with the air of a grudging recluse. Although peaceful philosophy did not come easily to a cynical man like Raymond of Tiberias. It grew harder to tolerate the continuous cycle of boredom and bigotry. He stared wearily down the length of the table. It looked less populated by the venerable than it used to do in the old days, he thought gloomily. They looked younger nowadays. Too young. There had been a time, in Tiberias' distant youth, when they had all looked inexpressibly wise and battle-hardened. Were they much younger now? Or was it with the foresight of age? Perhaps he seemed like some age-palsied lameter to them, in black velvet like a flayed mole. Perhaps Godfrey, with his sharp profile, seemed old to them. Godfrey, who had been a sturdy young mule of a knight when he came, and was hardly less stubborn in his dotage.

Bah, he despised banquets. They showed the years too much…

'My lord?' The Patriarch wrinkled his nose, irritated that his sermon had gone astray.

'Hmm? What?' Oh. There had been talking. Tiberias had strayed; even at table one was supposed to at least seem to respect the figurehead of Christendom in Jerusalem – however pathetic the puppet was. Heraclius blew like a political weathervane, swinging eagerly towards the strongest.

'We were talking, my lord.' The Patriarch said clearly – somewhat loudly, thinking the Marshal deaf. In some ways, for all his sophistication, he was very like the fat pilgrim-woman in matter of tact. There was a bloody look in Tiberias' sharp grey eye that would have warned another man of his folly. But Heraclius was plump, well fed, and absolutely assured of his importance. He paid no attention to lesser mortals. 'We were talking of my good Lord Guy's Christian duties in Acre. Bringing soldiers of Christ for the great protection of the Holy Sepulchre.'

'Were you now,' Tiberias said sourly. Sybilla, shrouded in her orange taffeta, darted an expressive look towards him-

Too late. There was a faintly reckless look in the Marshal's eye that defied warning 'Tell me, I am never quite sure in theological matters, your reverence… What exactly _is_ the Holy Sepulchre? Is it Nazareth? Bethlehem? Calvary? Where does the _true_ Sepulchre lie? Churchman's matters seem to quite confuse me-'

Sybilla half-rose, some smooth, placatory idea quick on her lips to ease the conversation into safer waters. But she had no sooner opened her mouth to speak than the voice of her husband rode roughshod over her, crushing her back into her seat.

'I am sure it _does_, Tiberias. But then, since _we alone_ guard the Holy Sepulchre from desecration - from the infidels you profess you love so much- perhaps you forget your religion...'

Ah. Tiberias had been expecting attack from that quarter. He repressed the vitriolic response tearing up from his throat and instead turned, slowly, to stare.

Guy de Lusignan.

The trouble with Lord Guy was that, superficially, if you gave him a cursory glance, he would be considered handsome. Perhaps, if he lowered his heavy eyelids to guard his expression, even benign. But it would have to be no more than a brief glance. There was something decidedly reptilian about the man. Oh, he was well built. In his youth Guy de Lusignan had certainly been known for his looks. And nature had granted him a saturnine set of comely, saturnine features that seemed to stamp leadership upon his face and form. Here it said, here was a man to lead others along a predestined path.

And only I know it leads to Hell, thought Tiberias, staring hard at the flushed face. Guy had been drinking steadily, heavily. The remark was unsubtle, even for him, a chisel to cut short conversation.

'Ah, yes…'He said, disdain falling cool as a wintry blast upon the table. Guy's remark had echoed (as he had intended it should) down the table, ending the lighter atmosphere of the courtiers altogether. 'We all know the piety of the Templars, do we not. Their _reputation_ sets a mark for us _all_ to live by…'

'Indeed!' Heraclius said hurriedly, casting an admonitory frown in Lord Tiberias' face, and taking his remark at face value. 'I wish that all here were as free from heretical opinion as the Templars-'

It was not a well-fashioned barb. But it was so blatant that Tiberias raised his eyes and stared icily at the Patriarch.

'You accuse me of heresy?'

'I believe you err,' the Patriarch said reprovingly, knotting his hands together, 'In your faith, my lord. Infrequently, as the entirety of this court does –' he attempted to cast a stern gaze about the Court. 'We are all human. But then, when one spends one time in idleness and pleasure seeking, instead of abstinence and fasting… We could do much worse than follow the example of Lord Guy. He rejects the mere gratification of the senses in favour of humility – spending his time converting others to the burning example of faith, bringing them to salvation in God's holy kingdom …bringing together a force that will strike down the infidels' might and bring us all one step closer to-'

Lord Guy lowered his lids over his eyes, in the lazy counterfeit of acknowledging his own virtue.

Tiberias slowly sank back in his chair, exchanging a glance with Godfrey, and wordlessly reached for the wine flagon. He felt he was not nearly drunk enough to bear this.

'I bow in the face of Lord Guy's knightly virtues and Christian piety.' He said dryly. 'Long may he continue in them.'

Only someone who knew him very well would have noticed the pained twang of bitterness in his voice.

* * *

'_Ammet!'_

There was a breathy hiss that broke the silence of Sybilla's quarters, punctuated by faintly breathless breathing. As though the speaker had been running – or, in this case, climbing, dropping to the ground, and then running.

'_Ammet!'_

There was the sudden gleam of silver in the dark.

'_Come a step closer and I will cut your throat.' _It warned, in a stream of swift Arabic.

'_It's Mirrum.'_

'_Oh.'_ The knife casually disappeared as swiftly as it had appeared. '_Where have you been? And what are you going to do?'_

'_Was I missed?'_

'_No. It was as well. The Frankish lord is back.' _Ammet spoke soberly_. 'A time for all that is good to be wary. I hope you know what danger you live with. He won't avenge himself on Sybilla if he finds out she spies. He'll choose to silence you instead.'_

There was a momentary silence.

'_I think I know.'_

'_Were you out trysting?' _Ammet lost interest in Mirrum now, speaking languidly, as she turned her head on the pillow. _'All girls have moonlight trysts with their lovers in Frankish songs.'_

'_Me?' _Mirrum thought about this one, and precisely what had happened, and shook her head_. 'You could call it that. But no.'_

'_What did you wake me for?' _Ammet said grumpily, turning into her pillow with a peevish air._ 'If you aren't going to speak about it?'_

'_There's a question I need to ask you.'_

'_Need? Now? At this time of night?' _Ammet sighed, impatient with her inept prodigy_.' What do you want, then?'_

'_Who serves in the upper part of the palace? The part behind the walled garden?'_

The effect on Ammet was electric. He shot bolt upright, her frame suddenly very still, and turned a disbelieving face towards Mirrum. _'Are you blind and deaf as well as stupid?'_ she said vehemently. '_Do you truly not know?! The King's apartments lie there.'_ Her voice dropped to a quiet hush, as though speaking softly in a hallowed place where she dared not tread. _'No-one goes there, except the physicians and the servants – dead men walking. They might as well all be living ghosts.'_

'_Why?'_

'_Why…' _Ammet's voice dropped again, dully. _'Why. You are a simpleton. The whole court…' _she hesitated._ 'No. You are not a simpleton,' _she added, more kindly. Mirrum looked bewildered and frightened in the dim light. _'Why should you know? The court doesn't speak of it? Why would they talk about what breaks their hearts? The king is a Lazarus man.'_

Mirrum looked more lost than ever. 'I don't understand…'

Ammet looked sideways at Mirrum, a dark, mocking shadow of Mirrum, and just looked at her, carefully picking her words before she uttered them. The look was almost enough – Mirrum almost guessed before she spoke. Almost.

'_They say one thing about him,'_ Ammet said slowly. _'From your holy scripture. Which may give you a measure of the truth. Out of the ten lepers the prophet __Īsā healed, the King would be the one that returned in gratitude.'_

A faint intake of breath from the shadows.

'_And that answers your question. The only men in the upper part – the healers and chosen servants – they wait. For him, or themselves, to die. Living death.__ Is that what you wanted?' _

'No wonder he said he was an observer,'Mirrum murmured under her breath.

'_What?'_

'_Mm? Oh, nothing, Ammet. Go back to sleep.'_


	9. Chapter 9

Mirrum, as it happened, was blessedly fortunate she had concluded her hasty conversation with her fellow waiting maid. Through the doors there came the agitated rise and fall of voices.

'Guy, you are drunk. You are drunk, and foolish.' Sybilla's voice was trembling, barely in control, but it quivered with cold anger. Mirrum did not know how anyone, even the sinister and unseen Guy, could resist a tone like that. It was a hooded viper's snarl of warning….

No, it wasn't, a small voice in Mirrum's head reminded her. It wasn't at all. For all Sybilla might threaten, to her lord and husband? It was like the whispers of cut grass stalks in the wind.

Ammet let out a quick, feline hiss, and ducked to the floor, dragging Mirrum with her. '_Discovered_,' she spat. _'He knows.'_

'_But how can he?'_

'_Listen to my lady's voice. She is frightened for all of us.'_

'Drunk? What sort of dutiful obedience is that from my wife?' Guy's voice was slurred by drink. It sounded –

Mirrum had had a very definite picture of Guy de Lusignan's voice from the letters. Harsh, arrogant, filled with a sort of menacing authority. Like – like Lord Tiberias turned into a wolverine. Wicked, yes, but infinitely subtle with it, like a smirking demon in a Mystery play. Hearing the drink-sodden syllables slur over the words like a dancing bear with alcohol poured down his throat…

So. That was the man Sybilla was wed to. Not someone you could clothe with even a shred of respect. She had been wed to a drunken sot with enough brains to be vicious, and to think he was clever – perhaps, on rare occasion, he could even manage it himself. But other than that a braying fool with no discretion and no sense of shame…

There was an agitated rustling noise, as if Sybilla had quickly eluded a drunken attempt at an embrace. 'You wretch,' she said clearly, her voice clipped and cold. 'Get to your rooms and sleep off the wine, and perhaps you make wake with a little wit – _my lord.'_

'What? My rooms are your rooms, lady wife…' There was a thud, and a slight cry of pain from Sybilla.

Ammet, beside her, murmured something vicious under her breath and felt under her pillow for the knife. Not so much a movement of threat, as a wistful thought of using it, but Mirrum could sense the movement in the dark next to her. 'Besides – I think we need to come to yet another _understanding_ about your little _spies_, don't we? Your little shrinking violets you set to watch me? You think I don't know? You think you can fool me? I know about the _gold_ you stake against your own husband_._ And about the steward – who, coincidentally, happened to get a little greedy and offered – haha, to _sell_ you for selling me. Naturally, I gave him the reward he so _aptly_ deserved.' There was a terrible silence, broken only by Sybilla's ragged breathing – harsh, as though she had been running and her breath caught in her throat in terror.

'I have a _new_ steward,' Guy continued, his voice casual. 'And the little dark-eyed maid you so conveniently 'left behind?' In Acre? You may need a _new_ maid-in-waiting. If you can find another Judas-woman, that is-' his voice built up to a threatening crescendo.

'If you so much as raise hand against me my brother shall hear of it.' Sybilla said in a strangled voice – but it was a hard one, the note of defeated triumph rising in her voice. An exhausted player throwing down a trump card. 'Husbands can be changed, my lord!'

'And so can wives, my _lady_. Especially when my knights keep your brother's kingdom from falling into pieces like a pile of old bones…'

'You wouldn't dare to raise arms against-'

'Oh, I shall not need to. I am patient, I can have Jerusalem without dabbling in blood.' Guy's voice positively gloated.

'Something you do so well,' Sybilla said bitterly.

'But…' Guy, out in the passageway, held one hand aloft, as though calling for silence. Perhaps his fuddled brain conjured up an imaginary audience, approving his every action. 'I think – _I_ think, since _my_ rooms are yours, it is not unreasonable for me to expect to find my letters in there, what do you think? And your fresh little Judas…'

'You wouldn't…'

The door burst open in a ferocious crack of panelled wood, making Ammet and Mirrum simultaneously flinch. Ammet, however, maintained a steely silence, her dark eyes glowering unbridled hatred at her mistress' liege lord, whilst Mirrum cowered behind her, all pretence at bravery completely gone.

Guy was clearly in the last stages of inebriation; red-eyed, swaying, and with jowls flecked with spittle, and staring about him with maddened eyes like a bull in torment.

'Where are they, then? Hmm? Where?' He swept a chest to the floor. 'I know they're here…' his eye came to rest on Ammet, sitting bolt upright with hatred like a wooden doll, and he sniffed disdainfully. 'I know you of old, infidel – you've not the wit to carry this out.'

One had to doubt this; Ammet had twice as many brains in her little finger than Guy had in his whole head. But Ammet merely stiffly inclined her head, curling her fingers into claws amongst the folds of her dress, and crawled almost protectively towards her mistress. Sybilla had tottered as though she were about to fall, her eyes fixed with anguished upon Mirrum. Both of them knew that there was a letter Mirrum had been set to translate that had not made its way to Sybilla yet. If Guy stumbled upon it…

Guy's drunken eyes followed her gaze, towards the half-obscured cloud of pale hair in the shadows. 'Is this your fresh one? Your accomplice, my _lady_?' he lunged towards the darkness.

Mirrum shrieked. But it was not a shriek like her normal voice – it was a crazed hoot, utterly unlike Mirrum as it was possible to get. And when she managed to stammer out something, the slight Saxon vowels had suddenly grown unaccountably thicker – heavier, slurring her speech into a countrywoman's thick burr.

'Uz didna mean harm to yuz, lord!' she sobbed. 'Uz did ne neither mean nor harm! T'was great honour for uz, lord, servin' my lady! Don't put me to the poorhuz! I got left az great gift for uz lady Sybiilea…I'ze only do knittin' and weavin' for uz! Don't put me to the poorhuz!'

Guy let go as quickly and as disgustedly though she had been revealed to be a plague victim covered in purple sores. 'Christ's wounds! You take in half-wits for your train, do you, lady?'

When Sybilla found her voice again, it trembled slightly, as it had before. But only Ammet noticed that there was a weak half-smile at the corner of her mouth that tugged at the frozen look on her face. 'Mirrum was a gift from a poor Saxon housewife, from the mud of England,' she said quietly. 'She is an innocent, but I did not refuse the gift. Mirrum does my menial work, for now. Is _that_ your spy, my lord? An addle-pate who can scarce remember her own name?!'

Guy swayed, lurched off a few paces, and then retreated to the door, holding up a threatening finger. 'There's a consp'racy here!' he announced drunkenly. The wine was now beginning to have a soporific effect. 'I shall find it out –Tiberias, old dog, he'll know of it… Shall go challenge T'berias f'r honour…'

Neither of the frozen tableau of three moved until guy's footsteps were crashing uncertainly down the passageway. Only then did Sybilla sigh, sag a little, as though the weight of her husband's presence were removed. 'You may bolt the door for tonight, I think, Ammet,' she said weakly. 'Mercy! What was that, petite revenante? I did not think…'

Mirrum's voice spoke. 'I'm sorry, my lady. For the pretence. But I did not care to follow the fate of the 'little dark-eyed maid' you left behind, and I thought discovery might mean ill for all of us.' Sybilla looked away. 'Who was she? The… dead maid?

Ammet hissed, again, but she did not look at Sybilla again. _'She was a good child, the dark-eyed one,_' she said quietly. '_Saffiya was her name. Once.'_

'I did not think it would be discovered…' Sybilla began drawing off the linen binding cloth that covered her lovely head with quivering fingers. 'Not like that… not so – you have quick wits, Mirrum…How did you know he would…'

'See what he did not expect to see?' Mirrum's voice was still a little cold – perhaps with shock, perhaps with the distasteful thought that the dangerous path she trod for Sybilla was strewn with corpses already. Her words fell hard and stony like pebbles. 'Lord Guy, I think, would think all English half-wits. Especially the Dane half-breeds amongst them. I merely humoured the illusion a little more.'

Sybilla's hand closed cold and anxious over her wrist. 'But the _letter_ –'

'Burnt.' Mirrum said promptly. 'I heard he had returned, lady. I have not been idle whislt I have been absent.'

'So there is nothing? _Nothing_ to hint at what you _really _were?'

'Nothing.'

Sybilla breathed again. 'Praise God!'

But – I would rather have something else to occupy myself with, whilst the Lord Guy is here, Mirrum thought anxiously. It was a thought that had stalked about her mind accusingly since quitting the walled garden and its mysterious occupant. Not so mysterious now, Mirrum thought. I think I may guess what he is…

Sybilla was staring wearily about the havoc of the room as Ammet fussed about her, undoing the clasps of her orange finery. But her eyes were sharp, for all they seemed to wander idly. At last they came to rest on Mirrum, standing at a loss in the middle of the room 'You shiver,' she said at length, looking narrowly at Mirrum's ashen face. For all she had staved off disaster, the encounter with Guy had toppled Mirrum's pride. She was a frightened child of a thing again, all huge eyes and thin face. And Sybilla was too shell-shocked by the foundering of her carefully laid plans to glibly build more. The death of the unknown Saffiya weighed heavily on her conscience.

'I cannot ask you to –to do what you have done for me, Mirrum,' she said determinedly. 'Not any more. With Guy here it is too risky. And we know that channel is discovered. Useless to try more for a while; we wait. And play at innocence, and see what we may discover…'

'May I still serve you?'

'What? Of course!' Sybilla waved one painted hand impatiently at her. 'Don't be a dolt, petite revenante. I will not discard you! But you must be content with plain fare for a while – embroidery, linenwork. Maid's duties. You must put by your learning and forget you have it – whilst Guy remains here. I think he will not stay; he never stays long. I must think of something – yes, something…' Sybilla's eyes shone with gratitude. 'You do learn fast, _petite revenante. _When your time comes, I shall find you a good husband.'

Mirrum thought of Guy, and restrained the somewhat wry face that formed inside her mind. Whether or no Sybilla was good at finding husbands for others, she had the Devil's fortune with her own.

'Now, what to do with you? It would attract attention if you were thrown among my tiring women – and you are a little too noticeable to hide amongst the servants for table… let me see… let me see…Yes.' Sybilla's smile curved strangely in her face – looking at once a little pained, a little confiding, and a little fearful. 'There is one place, where you will be hidden, attract little attention – and yet show you my trust.'

'_My lady?_' Ammet seemed to know what she was about to propose. '_But you do not_ _allow serving women to have the care of-'_

Sybilla batted her away as impatiently as if she were a fly. 'It is withdrawn, Ammet, from public scrutiny. Secluded. My son will come to no harm if Mirrum remains what I believe her to be – worthy of my trust. I do not need to ask that. Can you do that?' she turned back to Mirrum. 'Your duties will be very little; I undertake his education, you understand. At most, you may have slight mending duties. Menial work. As I said to Lord Guy. The only thing you will be required to do is remain with my son when I am not present.'

What an odd turn of events this was! But Mirrum was in fact better pleased than she would have been had she gone undetected, and Guy continued in ignorance of Sybilla's vigil. She had liked Prince Perseus, with his sad eyes and fair hair and deeply serious games. He could only be childlike when he stole the moment; never else.

She ducked, thankfully. 'I will not abuse your trust, my lady…' she said earnestly. 'You know me.'

'I do.' Sybilla said doubtfully, peering at her face. 'I hope I do.' Even now, on the cusp of gratitude she still had doubts. Her son was, perhaps, the only thing she was afraid of endangering by treachery.

'_Maman_ never gives me servants!' Baldwin looked both scared and excited by the change in his well-ordered life – as ruled as any novice's, and perhaps a little more ascetic. Sybilla took the charge of king-making very gravely indeed. She did not want to raise a Guy for the throne. It seemed especially strange that the new, alien thing in the order should be the pale-haired girl from the walled garden. At first there was a flicker of fear in the princeling eye that somehow Maman _knew_, Maman had been told everything by the girl… But it was alright. Mirrum had quickly raised a finger to her lips to show her silence on the matter. 'How is it it's _you_?'

Mirrum thought about this, and found she didn't have an answer. 'I don't really know, Highness. Really. I wish I did. But…'

Baldwin, to her surprise, slid down from his precarious seat, spindly legs dangling, and crossed the floor, looking worried. 'You don't mind, do you?' he asked anxiously. 'I _like_ it_ – _you can be my squire again when we fight the Chimera. Only it was close to a beating when we went…' he swallowed. 'I shan't go there again. I was sure _Maman_ would catch me.'

Mirrum remained silent. After all, she could not say _she_ would not cross the border again into the garden. Mirrum had kept her question, as a parting gift, and she thought now she had an answer – and another inclination to take a twilight walk as soon as she could manage it.

It is impossible to say why Mirrum thought that the voice, and that vague outline of a man, would not be there in daylight. Perhaps it was the old proverb again, ringing true – 'That which is not known is enchanting.' Besides, the somewhat troubling thought crossed her mind that the voice might perhaps belong to a scholar not entirely dissimilar to Guy de Lusignan…

That was nonsense, though. No scholar ever looked like Guy de Lusignan. But the thought that the voice might belong to some bloated, self-complacent creature who peered down at her with pig-like eyes and a condescending smile was so deflating that Mirrum would almost _rather_ slink, thief-like, into the walled garden when dark was just beginning to drop. If he looked like the Patriarch, then better to see his voice rather than his face. Besides, Sybilla was right; her duties _were_ slight, and relieved the minute the princeling entered his mother's care.

It was quiet in the garden, after the initial cautious scramble. Mirrum stopped to catch her breath before looking up through the dim light again, half–expecting the silhouette to have remained motionless since she left. Just like a stone angel; impassive until called upon. But the parapet was empty. There was no-one there.

Mirrum sagged, a little disappointed. She had thought – or hoped, perhaps, that he _would_ be there. The hoarded knowledge within her was somewhat impatient to break free.

Mirrum trailed a toe speculatively in the dust, carefully considering whether to toss a handful at the balcony or no – but then again, her soul recoiled from the terrible thought that it might bring a _stranger_ to the balcony, in that deserted place. Ammet's words had conjured up an image of a palace full of wraith-like 'walking ghosts'… no more honeysuckle beards, that was certain. What a little fool he must have thought her. If anything, the court of Jerusalem was a sickened, blighted thing like the Court of the Fisher King…

'You take twilight walks very frequently,' a familiar voice said dryly, directly above Mirrum's right ear. She jumped, startled, and then smiled. It _was_ him, after all.

'It's easier now.' Mirrum squinted cautiously up, at the silhouette, just in case it looked a little like the Patriarch… 'Things are changing. Lady Sybilla… _had_ to change things. It was a little awkward to keep me as I was…'

'Scratching out Greek, like a raw novice.' The voice agreed, once again showing a faint hint of smile in its tone. 'I can imagine that might be a _little_ dull for you – and a little too precarious.'

Mirrum shivered. The danger was still too close for her to feel comfortable thinking about it.

'You know much…'

'Come – we had a wager, did we not? A wager of knowledge. And it was not hard to discover. Lady Sybilla has a habit of being somewhat reckless – and with that comes carelessness into the bargain. Mir-rum.' He pronounced the word carefully, with a certain scholarly relish that Mirrum recognised of old. 'There. Is the wager won fairly?'

'Not…quite.' Mirrum said thoughtfully. 'I'm wiser than I left. And I think I know who you are, sirrah. It was not hard to discover. And I took a bold venture and guessed, from your learning, what you must be…'

Mirrum took a deep breath.

'You're a physician,' she said, with a quiet triumph. 'Aren't you? It all makes sense; One of the ladies spoke of living ghosts behind the upper wall. And you're learned enough to be a _nobleman_, if you chose. My father once said doctors could outrival any man alive for knowledge of the world. And you… know the Royal House well, so you must be a _trusted_ physician…' Mirrum's voice trailed away. There was a certain lack of response from above that made her question what she knew. 'And I …am sorry.' She said, a little nervously. 'I did not mean to be a simpleton about – about the King…'

To her surprise, when the voice spoke again, it sounded faintly relieved. 'About that?' it asked mildly. 'I found it a good jest, for my part. But then it is rather close quarters for me, as you can see…' The figure made a slight gesture with one indistinct hand – with something of self-mockery about it, Mirrum thought. She little knew quite how much. 'I can appreciate the irony. And I applaud your use of logic.' He added, thoughtfully. 'It is indeed… a good leap into the dark. Yes. You have the better of me, madam. Call me Physician. It is as good a name as any.'

'It's not your real name!' Mirrum said, a trifle indignantly. She felt a little cheated of her victory.

She could positively almost see the smile on the unseen Physician's face. 'Ah, but you did not guess my name,' he said enigmatically. 'You guessed my profession, and that is a different matter altogether...'


	10. Chapter 10

Mirrum found it hard to believe, after a while, that it hadn't always been so, and that she had once spent weeks, months, walking in a vague half-dream during which there had been nothing but Sybilla and Ammet – who both kept their own counsel, in many ways. Mirrum would never have _dared_ to call Lady Sybilla friend. Friends do not generally risk your life _for_ you, as Sybilla had done. And she had done it with a worrying ease. And Ammet? Ammet kept to herself. Hard to tell what she thought, or what she hoped for. She was …_remote_, like a distant glacier; beautiful but careful to show a frosty nature to any who approached. Mirrum sometimes, wondered in her slight, odd little way if Ammet too had caught, like a cold, the manners of her mistress. The servants had a peculiar, glorious snobbery of their own that would have rivalled the Court itself for sheer caprice of manner. It would never have occurred to Mirrum before now, but Sybilla took a certain thoughtless pleasure in making daring little sallies against the established role of dutiful wife, and that she was not humbled by the weight of lives on her conscience. She merely dived recklessly after another quarry, like a fluttering hawk. Oh, not thinking better of it, but merely… _forgetting it_. This was possibly _worse_. She dismissed the sacrifices as the loss of some brief, useful piece which had served its time, nothing more.

Mirrum, the poor pale corn stalk of a girl, could not understand this. She had quick wits in some instances; the terrible fear of discovery had prompted the swift mummery of a half-wit. But that there was peril in serving Sybilla had not quite occurred to her at first – and it was _not _that fear of a knife in the dark. That was not quite in the Princess. No. But in being caught and being finished for a sin that was entirely _Sybilla's_… That alone made Mirrum's soul troubled. After all, there were already so many little sins she could never confess to a priest lying heavily upon her – for Sybilla's sake. The sin of lying before God, the little service of the letters, which made the forgery of churchmen's safe-passage look like child's play; a light trifling sin in comparison to _this_. But for some little while before her second meeting with the Physician, it seemed quite as though Mirrum were lying in a straightened coffin of lead that quite crushed her into hardly daring to step outside the safe boundaries of being nursemaid, safely away from her previous position as intelligencer. The very thought of the perilously close brush with discovery made Mirrum weak at the knees when she thought about it, made her lower her eyes, made her feel vaguely sick and dizzy when she saw the distant sweep of a pale Templar's cloak in the cloistered walks…

To be completely fair to Guy, Mirrum's eyes often took on, in their pale glow, quite exaggerated colours as to people. Whilst Sybilla remained, and would remain, a confusing smudgy grey of a moral colour, moving from dark to light however Mirrum tried to look on her, Guy remained the blackest of villains in her eyes from that single terrifying moment onwards. No matter that, in one sense, Guy got so besotted with drink because he was aware of the hostile, barely tolerant flicker of his wife's eyes from him to the table, and that it was perhaps a more sympathetic mix of loneliness and vague, swelling pride of a man not accustomed to being baulked in his will. He remained a villain from a dark Arthurian legend to Mirrum, a serpent in the ivory Eden that she had fallen into so innocently by chance, and through a few odd throws of the dice by some mysterious player…

She rarely saw the author of her good fortune now. The Lord Marshal had other things to think about than trifling lady's maids – and if she had been momentarily useful, Mirrum thought with a sigh, or perhaps mildly amusing, then that was more than she would have thought. The occasional glimpses of Raymond of Tiberias, however, were odd things, in that Mirrum was never quite sure what would play out. Occasionally it might be a brusque, briefly perfunctory glance thrown her way, scarcely taking her in at all. More often a brief nod, as one acquaintance to another, which puzzled and quite flattered Mirrum's pitiful stock of little vanities. As her first acquaintance, however lowly a position she had now, she felt a lively interest in the bear-who-was-no-bear at all. But it did trouble her, the court business. Was everyone, then, intent in some carefully marked throw that might determine good or ill? Did even the Lord Tiberias – who had a kindly look, beneath that bear-like antagonism – play games with Fortune in order to be lifted upon her wheel?

Mirrum actually asked the question on her second visit to the Physician, when she had outgrown some of her unreasonable terror of being caught by De Lusignan himself. And even then, the brief thought that perhaps the Physician, close to the King as he was, might dabble with the caprices of Fortune too, crossed her mind.

The Physician thought about the question for a long time. It grew so still that Mirrum feared he might have been called away, and that she had lost her acquaintance as soon as she had heard his voice. But he was merely pondering his answer.

'I would not always trust my word as your Oracle upon these matters,' he said at last. Faintly wearily, Mirrum thought – there was a note of tiredness in that peculiar voice of his. It stumbled a little. 'Especially not politics. Take most – I say most – of it for what it is and leave well alone for the rest. It hardly matters to you, does it? I cannot say that I think you plot and plan like a furtive baron in your waking hours…' The arch note of wry amusement had come back. That reassured her. The halting words had made her feel a little concerned for her Physician – had the question troubled him? Was he well?

'Not I.' She said plaintively. She made an odd sight; vaguely imp-like, if anything. A long-limbed, gangling child, caught halfway between an unwanted womanhood and a poor scrap of girlhood – and all topped with a shock of frowsy pale hair that looked like the whispers of dandelion seeds blown crazily about her head in tight feathers, like a troll maiden from the old Danish tales. 'I… Physician, you know I serve the Lady Sybilla?'

'I guessed it.' The Physician paused, briefly, the shrouded head turning a little as though scenting some note of discord. 'Is there much amiss in the Lady Sybilla's service?'

The note of genuine concern struck home, like an arrow finding it's mark. Mirrum's shoulders slumped. 'Not _now_.' She said miserably. 'I should be glad it is over and think no more of it – only it does haunt me… a _little_, Physician. A little. And I can't confess to a priest because it goes beyond sin – beyond any sin I ever had to confess before, and…' Mirrum gulped. There was a harsh lump in her throat that quivered when she spoke, shamingly.

'_I_ am no priest.' The Physician said quietly. Kindly, Mirrum thought, inexpressibly kindly – she glanced up in earnest gratitude for her ghostly friend. 'I have ears. And a little knowledge. If you wish to speak, I am willing to listen.'

And by spurts and starts it all came flooding out from Mirrum. Everything. Even down to the shameless forgeries of letters of safe-passage, the propulsion of Mirrum from a life in service of a Northern fen-woman to Sybilla's waiting-maid, the kindly intervention of Lord Tiberias… The new tasks. The unsought dangers. The meeting with Prince 'Perseus', the solemn waxen Baldwin, which the Physician surely knew already, but patiently did not halt the tide of confession. And, finally, the encounter with Lord Guy. The discovery that there were dead in her service, there were souls gone in helping Sybilla, and that she flew from them as unconcernedly as a cat drops a dead mouse that she sports with in her claws for better prey…

The Physician said nothing. Occasionally he would interrupt, to test her words with a brief, gentle question: how did she know Lord Tiberias? What did she know of him? Until at last Mirrum's words – and the faint drip of tears, for which Mirrum praised Heaven it was dark – trickled to a halt, and there was silence once more in the darkness of the garden, save for the slight dry whisper, far above Mirrum's head, of the Physician shifting slightly – leaning a little over the parapet, although he was still swathed in his customary shadow. It hurt to try to make out any features, anything other than the sharp outline of deeper shadow against the faint ruddy glow of a light somewhere high above, but Mirrum felt that she was being keenly watched behind the darkness…

'What do you wish of me?' The Physician said at length. He spoke tranquilly, but it was still a direct question. 'Penance? After the manner of a confessor? You do not need _penance_.'

'But the _sin_…'

'Ah, you show your innocence there.' There was a smile in the voice again, a softly rueful one. 'Have you never heard, Dane lady, of a thing called a sin of necessity? In your scholarly gleanings?'

Mirrum could not say she had. Her pale face twitched into curiosity.

'No? Well, Dane lady – a sin of necessity is something God sees the reasoning for. Even if man may not tolerate the logic behind it. Your forgeries protected your mistress, did they not? Who would have fallen foully, and you with her?'

'Well,_ yes_, but they were _churchmen'_s letters…'

'_Did_ you protect your mistress with the letters?' The Physician said sharply. 'Well. No matter _whose _they were, you did right. And if churchmen were all they pride themselves to be, where would be the need for forgery? You saved a life by using the wits God gave you. I am no strong theologian, but even I can see a paradox in allowing a death in obedience to God. What would the world be if the Lord of Heaven is as petty-minded as His servants?'

Mirrum had not thought of it like this. It sounded faintly heretical, and not a little dangerous to declare, but the Physician had spoken it as if it was clear common sense… and it was. It was the sort of faintly rebellious thought that lodged at the back of the mind when one passed the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Never to be spoken, surely?

'What about the Lady Sybilla?' she asked wretchedly. 'What am I to do _there_, Physician? There is a _life_ on my conscience…'

'But _you_ did not kill the serving maid.' The Physician pointed out, gently. 'Neither did you cause her death.'

'I started to play the same game, though. I thought I was so clever…' Mirrum stared at her long-boned, red-knuckled hands, as though there was a crimson spatter of blood upon them. 'I'm a fool.'

'If you were a fool you would not be in the Lady Sybilla's retinue.' The Physician remarked, his voice firm. 'She does not suffer lack-wits gladly. I would not think her _cruel_, no – but I rather think she can turn so. If provoked. She merely holds the faith in which she was bred, child. And she is reckless with her allies as she is foolish with her enemies. Lord Guy is not the mummer's Satan you think, no more than Sybilla is an angel of light. Men are men, for good or ill; and it holds true in court as well as anywhere else.'

Mirrum nodded. 'Yes…' she said uncertainly, plucking at a loose scrap of linen thread straggling from her skirts. 'It does. But it's still all so… _confusing_. I shall never make sense of any of it.' She looked upwards, faintly ashen-faced. The knot of almost physical fear in Mirrum's stomach, whilst loosened, was not entirely dispelled. She was almost reluctant to let go of her fright, unsettling as it was.

'I think I _am_ a coward, Physician. I'm frightened I shall have to be a spy again...'

'You chose not to be.' The Physician said peaceably. 'And Sybilla, out of a little guilt, I should think – may let you remain where you are.' He took a breath; Mirrum heard a faint, hollow sigh emerge above her head. 'Does the business…_trouble_ you? If that is not a foolish question. In your – _loyalty_ to the Lady Sybilla?'

There was something rather sharp about this question, which stung Mirrum into an instant defence. She bridled. 'No! She loosed me, didn't she? She has my love. _And_ my loyalty.' She added, indignantly . 'It just… frightened me. A little. Because I did not understand it. What do you make of it all, Physician? You've been at Court longer than I.'

'Most of my life.' The voice said soberly. 'If that is anything to boast. I see somewhat _little_ of it now.'

Mirrum bit her lip. The second meeting had gone sadly awry from what she had intended, and now Mirrum had the distinct impression she was skirting around the lip of somewhere she should not tread…

'Nothing to regret, Dane lady,' the Physician said, reading her thoughts by uncanny tact. 'I rather think I miss nothing very great or very glorious, hmm?' It was spoken cheerfully, to Mirrum's surprise.

'Does it go well with you, Physician? When you tend to the King?'

'Tending to his beard?' the Physician said wryly, the silhouette shaking a little as though in quiet laughter. 'See, wisdom is a terrible thing. You stay solemn as a plaster saint.' He considered the question. 'The King is well enough.'

'And _you_?' Mirrum said anxiously. 'You aren't worked too hard, Physician?'

This seemed to afford the Physician some merriment. 'I? No. Good heavens, not I.' He said amiably. 'Thank you for the thought, Dane lady, but I am quite in spirits. And _you_ should keep yours, and forget the intrigue.' The Physician was firm once more. 'You have good sense when you don't consider too much and too long – and in a way – you were helping the little Prince Perseus better than you could by playing legend with him. I fear I make a poor ghostly confessor, but the best penance you can do for that is to forget it, for now.'

It was good advice, Mirrum considered, as she made her usual sally over the wall in a tumble of snagged linen skirts. Better than any you would get from a holy man. And on the whole, rather more practical. It was just to put it into practice that would be the trouble…


	11. Chapter 11

Let the reader conjure up: a place. Much like the rest of the Palace of Jerusalem; it does not differ so very greatly from that softly tiled Paradise that dazed Mirrum so blindingly at first. It has sunk into mere commonplace grandeur now; a backdrop, nothing more, like a painted puzzle-box. But perhaps the palace takes on a little of the nature of its inhabitants. Sybilla's rooms, for instance, were quiet, except for where a bold slash of red tapestry would sudden jar the room from its pale tranquillity. A sullen ecclesiastical purple girded the walls of the Patriarch's. The Lord Marshal's rooms in Jerusalem (when he kept to them – he had a house in Jerusalem, for when the acrid hostility of politics became something too much for his jaded palate) were composed of hard, brusque wooden furniture that belied the Lord Tiberias' nature like nothing else.

And yet – whilst this is not the Lord Tiberias' apartments, nothing like it – the Lord Tiberias is here. The same lean, rangy build of old, as Mirrum first saw him, but he looked ill at ease within it as he sat, shifting a little, occasionally drumming restless fingers on the table like a patter of summer rain. Occasionally he sighed as he glanced about – a sad, exasperated half-breath.

The room is indeed a curious one. Papers lie strewn like scholastic flowers about the place; the crabbed, cramped writing of monkish copying _here_, the looped curlicued refinement of _thuluth, _the formal Arabic script_ there…_ Too much for a mere courtier. A little too much for a scholar of the ordinary kind. There are plans of the walls; detailed cross-sections of the fortifications. But the inhabitant is no architect. There are calculations, worked in a practiced dexterity, but he is no mathematician either. The banked coals of the many heated braziers glow softly in the dusk, releasing grey wisps of camphor-scented smoke into the air with a steady constancy that tokens the presence of…physicians…

But he is not that. Or perhaps - he _is. _But only when he chooses to be. That, and a frozen battle of an ivory army against a perpetual ebon foe, hint at the presence of one who has the patience and the interest to maintain a steady, wryly played game of delicate balance.

Tiberias fidgeted with a stilled pawn, turning it over and over in his gloved fingers. 'I do not like it, my lord,' he said quietly. 'I like it still less when I think of his absence – and for such a reason as _this…_' Tiberias snorted – although faintly. 'I never thought Godfrey much of a penitent before now.' He said grudgingly. 'I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. He was running from something in his youth – younger sons generally do. You could see it, in his eyes.' Tiberias went briefly silent, thinking of the younger days in Jerusalem. 'But God's bones! To pick such a time! Now! For a scourging of what is likely to be his vanity, when it all comes to nothing…' Tiberias glared briefly at the figure, sitting silent and grave as a carved saint, upon the other side of the frozen chessboard. 'I wish you would refuse him leave, sire.' He said in a plaintive growl. 'It would save _much_ trouble all round…'

'I think _not_.' The king answered evenly. His is a young voice, with a peculiar tone – a little unevenly pitched at times, as though the speaker sometimes struggles a little to catch his breath, his words faltering. Occasionally they die into an echo, a metallic murmur that causes Tiberias to stare at his liege lord with instant concern. 'There we must agree to differ.'

'Yes.' Tiberias said, in a somewhat more softened tone. 'Yes, I thought we might.' He sighs, turns his grizzled head away, and shrugs his shoulder. 'I don't begrudge Godfrey his soul-searching. A man has only one, after all – I wish him contentment. But you could prevent him, you know.' Tiberias' voice was wistful. 'You have his love, his fealty; he would stay if you commanded it…'

'I know he would.'

' But…lord.' Tiberias wearily set the pawn down in his proper place among his fellows, and leant back in his chair. 'I know you will _not_.'

The conversation, short and brief though it was, expressed a wordless bond of sympathy between Raymond of Tiberias and his liege lord; a comprehensive understanding of each other that went beyond the quiet role of subject and sovereign. Tiberias often discovered something hitherto unexpected about himself when he spoke with his King. It was why he came. Part of him was in faint awe of the creature half his age who spoke (to Tiberias' mind at least) like Christ conversing with the elders in the temple. Another half of him – a more troubled half, I fear - felt bitterly soured, angry at the circumstances that accompanied the philosophy, but – he was resigned. To how it would eventually end.

Did Tiberias show his feelings in his face?

It would be difficult to know how the King saw the Lord Marshal in the quiet games of logic they played. It would be difficult for Tiberias to judge. But he had learned to read the eyes, and he followed them keenly.

'Well!' the Lord Marshal said impatiently, making a bishop sidle forwards a few paces, and in his own way, making amends for pressing the point. 'I lose patience with Reynaud. He squirms and oils his way out of the business. I would stake my life those renegade Templars are within Kerak. But- '

The gloved fingers make a sharp dive for a pawn, deftly placing it, with a quiet little c_lick, _in a swift counter-move. 'At any rate, we know of them.' The king said absently. 'Guy can afford to _wait_, Tiberias. He will not have to wait long.' There is something of dark humour in the last few words. 'I doubt he would hazard his head by attempting a coup.'

'He hazards all ours by the massacres Reynaud delights in.' Tiberias said, stonily refusing to guess his liege lord's meaning. The thought of Guy in power torments the Lord Marshal like a hair shirt. He avoids thinking of it. 'And endangers the peace.'

'That can be halted.'

'Not Reynaud.' Tiberias said gloomily. 'One day I shall _hang_ him...'

'If he can be caught in a cleft stick.' Another _click_, from the board, that plucks one of Tiberias' knights from the board and dispatches him straight, an unhappy prisoner. The King has no love for Reynaud de Chatillon. 'And Guy?'

'Guy is what he always was, lord. A buffoon in a foreign land.' Tiberias said mercilessly, enjoying the momentary spite. 'But he's all bluster now he knows I _know_ of his men-at-arms. I fear Sybilla reaped the worst of it, though. But she has a quick tongue of her own – more than a match for Guy, if put to the test.'

To his surprise, this fresh news does not seem to surprise the King. He nods as if this is mere course, glancing a little aside, and then fixing his gaze straight on Tiberias. 'She spies.' He said plainly.

'I-' Tiberias was taken aback. He stares. 'You know?' He demanded. 'How?'

The hollow, breathy chuckle, with it's flat metallic echo, might have come from Mirrum's Physician himself. 'She is my sister, after all. And a woman of resource. It was to be expected.'

'Indeed!' Tiberias looked askance. 'Then, since you divine so much, you must know that Sybilla is a reckless opponent.' His queen, as though by association, smartly captured a pawn. 'She does her cause more harm than good with Guy. And it would not take much to tip the balance a feather's turn and set all to ruin. It needs but a fit of caprice with the woman for the glorious Templar lord to turn savage…'

'You paint too darkly, Tiberias.' The pale gloved fingers are outstretched, circling, yet – the King holds, abruptly, from making the move he intended. 'But Sybilla is reckless, yes.' He hovers, briefly, over one of the few pawns left scattered over the board. 'How does she use her – spies?'

'What? Oh. Not entirely ill.' Tiberias shrugged his shoulders, a little gruffly. 'Pathetic sorts of intelligencers. Little scared dark-eyed things. Like flies to a spider.' Tiberias did not entirely approve of Sybilla. His own intelligencers had at least a chance of defending themselves; at least a modicum of cunning. Hers seemed to have the lifespan of a giddy mayfly in the web that was court…

'Apart from the pale child.'

_Click._ The King moved a pawn, gently, nudging it back into the safety of the regimented lines. Tiberias realised he had unconsciously voiced his thoughts.

'An odd sort of scholar.' He said bluntly. 'She may last a _little_ while; educated women are a rare breed. Odd way of looking at you – and ridiculously untutored in some ways, but – clever. Sybilla makes use of her, I know that.' He twitched a knight into gallant motion across the board. 'I should be sorry were Sybilla… reckless.' He was surprised to find he meant it. Mirrum had hardly entered his thoughts since he had passed the responsibility to Sybilla, and yet she had a way of pervading, a little – like a wind through the cracks of Tiberias' well-regulated mind. Unsettling.

The impassive glance his liege lord turned upon him was the same as ever; quiet, unswerving. But there was something of faint curiosity – and knowledge- in it that made Tiberias look slightly away again. His face had spoken too much of his thoughts.

'And yet a pawn of Sybilla's would not, I think, interest you.' He said, without looking back. 'My lord, perhaps I weary you. Until tomorrow-'

'They are not always pawns.'

'My lord?'

'You have begun to think like a man, Tiberias, not a lawmaker. We forget, you and I, that the pawns are people. They can be afraid. They can be… uncertain.'

'Uncertain?' Tiberias rose and made his obeisance, looking gravely at his King with a look of quiet understanding. 'Yes. Perhaps. ' He twitched over his own little carved king, in a sign of amiable defeat, where he fell flat upon the board, and turned to leave. 'Until the morrow, majesty…'

'Are you afraid?' The King looked back at the retreating figure of Tiberias; held on a string, plucked back, like a deft fisherman, by the mere quiet assertion of his master's words. 'Of what may happen to the pale child?'

The question sat so close and unexpected upon Tiberias that he hardly knew how to answer. 'I scarcely know the pale child, my lord, and she is hardly my concern –'

The blithe reply died on Tiberias' lips. Evasion was fruitless here, after all. 'Yes.' He said, in a low voice. 'Yes, I fear. I fear that the court may taint her. Or crush her from without, or sour her. It is rare to find an educated innocent…' Tiberias stared into some distant horizon. 'Hah. Yes. I would not like to see her change.'

_Although I can think of one other, once, I knew like that._ Tiberias thought silently, his face still half-averted.

_Click_. The little carved monarch had been righted again, and carefully put back into his proper place upon the board. Ready for another battle of wits some other time.

The pawn, again, lightly touched by a gloved finger, rocked unsteadily upon the battlefield. 'I think, Tiberias, that keeping your pale child alive might remind you that you are a man.'

Tiberias looked momentarily hunted. 'I hardly know the chit –'

'For _Sybilla's_ sake, if not for her own.' The emphasis was sharp. 'I would like to – know of my sister's movements. By guarding the pawn, you guard the queen. Is that not so?'

'If you wish it, my lord.' Tiberias bowed, a little bemused. This was so very far from familiar waters…

But not, he realized, entirely unwelcome. It would be a pleasant excuse; for whilst Tiberias ensured Sybilla was kept under close watch anyway, he rather regretted losing sight of Mirrum. She was such an odd contrast…

So Tiberias left, with a slight spring in the soldierly limp that had not been there before.

And his King? What of him?

It would have been a lonely place for any man, even a roaring thunderer like Guy de Lusignan with the constitution of a prize ox. Being placed upon a bleak pedestal of prominence, of _judgement_, is a difficult plateau to ascend. It is, in the normal run of things, a little like being thrown up into the sky. The dizzying height can make people – the people who are pawns - little things, little numbers to be rallied and scattered and lost and found; but not _people_.

This particular king was perhaps more isolated than other monarchs. It would be hard to say he was the weaker for it. He had always played a cautious game with the little numbers allotted to him.

But… something in the way he glanced first at the board, and then at that pale frozen pawn, still slightly rocking in its place, showed a gentle interest. Not a new one, for was not the reading of men part of his trade?

Understanding the uncertainty of one particular pale pawn was not likely to be reckoned amongst his tasks. The Physician did not quite understand yet that he too had fallen into a common error with Tiberias, and had begun to think as a man. Not quite a lawmaker. Or a physician.


	12. Chapter 12

It was a map.

Mirrum had seen maps before. Monks were careful and painstaking over accumulated knowledge of the lands of Europa; although their crabbed drawings of England always, through some perhaps defensive lack at being a lonely island, made it look twice as big as the Holy Roman Empire itself. The colours were beautiful in the painted manuscripts. Mirrum had often wondered if the world really was a shimmering sea of gold and brown and scarlet from above, but she had never questioned it. It was what was.

This map was different. It was mere ink outlines, and the parchment was faintly dog-eared, as though it had been used many times. Parts of it were almost furry from being folded and handled so often. It had neat, careful lettering and notes around the edges, though, added in a different hand. You would not find it on any ordinary map. Putting a finger to it, Mirrum thought she could recognise Sybilla's tidy scrawl.

'_Maman_ says it is a good lesson,' the little prince said glumly. Baldwin was hunched up on his spindly knees, absently plucking at a ragged edge of the parchment.

'It's a good map…' Mirrum said amiably. It _was_ a good map – big enough to lie on your stomach and follow the places from city to city. She tapped England, which was reduced to its proper size – hardly bigger than an upturned walnut shell. 'That's where I came from.'

'England-is-ruled-by-Henry-and-his-sons-are-Richard-and-John,' Baldwin quoted, in a flat little parrot-like voice. 'His-grandfather-was-William-of-Normandy. Normandy-is-one-of-the-many-domains-of-the-French-kingdom…'

He stopped at Mirrum's quizzical look. '_Maman_ makes me learn it,' he explained solemnly. 'The names and lineage of all the empires and all the kingdoms and everything. It's important.'

'Not _interesting_, though.' Mirrum shook her pale head at him at though shaking off, with an impatient shying away of her head, the accumulated knowledge of kings. 'What do you know about _England?'_

'It-is-part-of-the-lands-and-domains-of-Normandy, established-through-William-of Normandy's-marriage-to-the-house-of-Edward-the-Confessor-and-held-through-rightful-championship-from-the-battle-at-Hastings…'

'That's all?' Mirrum paused, somewhere between laughter and puzzlement. England was not great compared to the French court, or the Holy Roman Empire's munificent boundaries, but –

'I'll tell you,' she said firmly. 'There's more to the Curtmantle than that…'

"Who will rid me of this turb – tub -…'

'_Turbulent_…"

'Oh, _turbulent_. Maman will be pleased I know that.Who will rid me of this _turbulent_ priest?!'

The Lord Marshal stumbled, in the midst of his musing on the curious conversation the night before, on a rather odd method of schooling. The sheltered cloister offered an unrivalled spectacle that drowsy afternoon of the pale child and the little spindly prince. But the young Prince was pretending to have a severe fit of temper, by the looks of things, shouting and pretending to tear his hair with the impetus of frenzied childish play. Mirrum, on the other hand, was a stage villain, hissing and cackling confidentially into a perfumed acanthus bush.

'Did I do it well, Mirrum? Did I?'

'More anger, I think, highness,' Mirrum said easily. 'Remember, you're _furious!_'

'Can't we have the martyrdom part?' Baldwin's face was flushed with the excitement of it all, mingled with a certain ghoulish fascination. 'I want to act the bit where Thomas Becket's brains mingle with his blood and Reginald Fitzurse lets them spatter on the cathedral floor!'

Mirrum's pale face twitched in rueful amusement. Inside every small boy is a little savage waiting to clamber out. The _Chronicles of England _had been very censorious on the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the monk inscribing it had gone into every particular.

Mirrum's education had been a curious patchwork of knowledge.

'Becket, or Fitzurse?' she asked drily.

'Fitzurse! You can be Becket, if you like,' Baldwin added graciously, a little out of breath from capering round about in a circle. 'You take three blows, and you sacrifice yourself, and then I'll be the penitent king and put ashes on my head…'

So Mirrum gravely let herself be martyred. Although she was decapitated with an acanthus branch, rather than a sword, and they used blossoms for the 'brains', and by the time 'Becket's' body was twitching with suppressed laughter in the dirt, 'Fitzurse' had got rather hot and tired, and went to sit by Becket's corpse with an air of wondrous delight.

'Again!' he demanded. 'Please! I want to play that again…'

The harsh irony of the Lord Marshal's voice shivered the game into broken glass,like a thrown stone.'A _pretty_ play I am sure too, highness…'

Tiberias was faintly amused, and a little disappointed, that his voice had such a sobering effect on both child and maid. Baldwin started, gultily, and stood immediately upright as though ashamed to be caught slaughtering bishops, whilst Mirrum rose in an agitated flurry of dusty linen and tried to look responsible.

'My lord…'

'Lord Tiberias…'

The Lord Marshal nodded with mock gravity at them both. 'Highness,' he said quietly. 'The sun is strong. Perhaps you should walk a while in the cool, elsewhere…'

Mirrum hastened after, in an agitated swish of skirts.

'Not _you._' Mirrum's back froze, poised in mid-scurry. 'You may walk with me a little.'

'But his highness-'

'The princeling will do very well without for a few moments. I wish to speak of other things. _Apart_ from the bloody martyrdom of priests.' Tiberias spoke severely, but Mirrum, flinching a little, noticed a subdued twinkle in the dark scar-pocked eye and half-smiled. She had forgotten the sense of humour.

'You play with the child,' Tiberias continued, idly slapping his glove against his knee as they walked. 'That is good.' He eyed her, awkwardly, and then cast his gaze towards the skipping puppet that was Baldwin hurrying out of sight. 'Sybilla tutors him well, but she does too much too soon. Out of agitation, I fear. She knows he will become king too young to understand it. He gains a kingdom but loses a childhood by it.'

'Is that so likely?' Mirrum asked, with strained civility. She kept on her guard; she valued her new-found liberty too much to like the thought of being a spy again. 'I thought there was no prospect of that… soon...'

'He should be king already, by rights.' Tiberias bit the words off hard, spitting out the acrid bitterness of the word. 'By expectations, at ay rate. Some who would be Regent are sorely disappointed by the present King's… tenacity.'

Mirrum lowered her eyes. Tiberias was not talking to her; he was talking to some reproachful shade of his own thoughts, hovering invisible in the cloistered walk. But she heard it with unease. It was in truth a rather selfish unease; what would happen to the Physician? There would be no need for _him _once the King died. He would go away, most likely forever. New Royal Physicians would be introduced, changes made, uncertainty made certain…

Mirrum didn't even know his name.

'I pray God that will not happen soon.' She said fervently, thinking, also, with a pang of indignation, of the funny child with large mild eyes and the pale face. Poor little prince Perseus didn't deserve that thrust upon him. He was too solemn as it was, with his serious play at knights. Today had been a rare time indeed, that he could be _playful._ It was unfair. And unjust. For both the little Prince and the Physician…

Tiberias glanced sharply at the set, earnest sliver of face beneath the pale frizz, with the hard eyes, and half-smiled; before uttering a muttered exclamation and looking at her more gravely. 'Struth, I do believe you mean it…' he mused. 'You. Loyalty indeed...and you understand. Foolish half-child as you are… I believe you grasp what I mean by…' He looked at her, again, his dark eyes inscrutable. Just looked, but the strangeness of the look made Mirrum shift uncomfortably in her battered shoes.

'What do you know of the King, child? Anything? Nothing? What does the name mean to you?'

'I – I know that he rules the Holy Land…' Mirrum stammered, and then felt ashamed at the snort Tiberias gave.

'A half-wit might know that. I shall test your honesty now. What have you heard from your whispering confederates of the King?'

Mirrum's heartbeat stopped. Did he mean the Physician?

'I-'

'Eh?' Tiberias looked half-savage, although the pained look in his eyes spoke it was more with a disconnected sorrow. 'Well? What do Sybilla's damned maids whisper?'

'That he is ailing,' Mirrum said quickly. 'I know no more nor less than that.' It was true. Mirrum had often itched to question the Physician more closely on the nature of his master, but on the few occasions that she had he had been evasive. After a few instances of firm changing the subject she had left it well alone. Perhaps, through some guarded remembrance of the Hippocratic oath, he left the nature of the King to itself. Baldwin knew nothing of his 'uncle-king', as he so gravely called him.

But…Mirrum saw the old, faded hopelessness in Tiberias' eyes. It was like looking into the deadened eyes of the old monks in the infirmary: grieving for their spent years, grown resigned to death; and yet raging, glowering at it inside, defying it to come a step closer. It wasn't Tiberias' own death he fought so fiercely. It was the King's.

Suddenly she knew what to say to him

'I did hear one other thing,' she said quietly. 'Of the ten – who- who were healed by the Christ, my lord…' The Lord Marshal's shoulders went taut like a bent bowstring, 'The King would be the one who returned in gratitude. I thought that spoke of a good man. To hear it of a king is…comfort indeed, I think. It must be good to serve such a man.'

Tiberias stopped dead, turning away with a mute, blind movement of one hand that implored forbearance. He turned his face to the wall.

'Yes,' he said, at last, in a ghostly voice so unlike his own at Mirrum stared aghast. 'You – you cut to the quick, pale child. You know by instinct.'

He raised his grizzled head to stare at her. 'I shall watch you with interest, pale child. Your progress at court should be a great one, if Heaven judges. That was the wisest… any could have given…'

The pale, childish face, half woman, but mostly child, looked afraid of the effect she had produced. She started back, taking his words as a final dismissal.

'I shall see to the prince, my lord –'

'Wait.' To Mirrum's great surprise, the gloved hand made a slight snatch for her own. 'I wish for further words with you. Not now. Tomorrow's dusk may do just as well.'

'I shall try, my lord, but-'

'Sybilla will excuse you. Tomorrow dusk, remember that. Tomorrow.'

'And he wishes to speak with me tomorrow.'

Mirrum held nothing back at her twilight interviews with the Physician. They were not always strictly confessional; occasionally it was an amphitheatre, a place of oratory, a scholar's hall, and then, just simply; a place for talk and easy friendship. Mirrum would have traded a _thousand_ ladies in waiting for the soft hours of the walled garden, and that familiar silhouette.

Ammet had dismissively and rather bluntly made one remark on the subject. Just one.

'_He probably wishes to take you as his mistress,'_ she said boredly. _'Frankish lords do. I am surprised you are so green as to wonder at it.'_

'_That's not it!'_ Mirrum's cheeks had flushed, hotly. _'That is shameful and-'_

'_Oh, it's not because you're pretty.' _Ammet looked Mirrum over as she would a horse, dark-haired, clever, and much more worldly wise._ 'It's merely in the course of things. Most serving-women bless their saints for chances like that. The rewards are… considerable.'_

'_Not I! Do __**you**__ –'_

'_Nor I.' _Ammet's face went sharp_. 'I have a marriage waiting for me, when I choose. Look to your own __**fortune**__, colt-girl. That may be it.'_

The sharp indignation remained still, along with a slight quiver of unease. Mirrum was not ignorant; too much time in byres and the sties of the North provide ample education for an observant girl. And besides, some of the more neglected manuscripts had dwelt with unhealthy interest on the corrupt decadence of royal courts and their mistresses. But there was something vaguely nauseous in Ammet's matter-of-fact way of speaking of it…

'You don't think it's true, do you, Physician?' she asked, at length. 'I hardly thought so until …' She glowered into the water, glaring at the reflection of an imaginary Ammet.

Mirrum was startled, and oddly pleased, by the quiet, good-hunoured sound of the Physician laughing. It had a different note to the hollow laughter; it sounded more generous. Younger laughter. It made Mirrum suddenly unsure if the invisible scholar were only a little older than herself.

'_Tiberias?_ Forgive me, but I think not.'

'Oh…' Mirrum relaxed. 'Good.'

'Did that displease your self-pride?' There was a faint mocking edge to the Physician there; faint, but still present.

'Not at all!' Mirrum cried indignantly. She was glad it was dark, her face felt hot and vaguely feverish, as though she had caught an ague. '_I'm_ not –'

'No. You are not.' The Physician's voice agreed. 'And Tiberias is rather long of tooth to consider it. Perhaps in his younger days, but – well, I cannot say I remember it…'

'You knew him?'

A pause. 'He has been at court since the days of the old King. I can hardly say not. But I was a child then. He was a man. There is a world of difference between the two.'

'But he isn't likely to try to make me his mistress?' Mirrum pursued – more amiably than anxiously now the thorny ground was cleared up.

'He may already have one.' The Physician said tartly. 'Or a score of mistresses. It is hardly _my_ province.'

'Nor mine.' Mirrum scuffed her shoe idly in the tussocky grass. She hadn't told the Physician of their talk of the King, although he had enjoyed the description of the 'death of Becket' as enacted by little prince Perseus. He sounded a little sharp-voiced and tired tonight. Quite unlike his usual self.

'You aren't over-tiring yourself, are you, Physician?' she questioned anxiously, lifting up her frowsy head to stare upwards. 'You mustn't on my account. I forget we talk for hours...'

It hadn't always been so. It was often not more than an hour at most. But they talked of so much, and there had been one occasion where Mirrum, eyes squeezed shut, had conjured up her sire's voice and declaimed _Beowulf_ in the tongues of her fathers. After that the talk with the Physician often stretched on for half the night, swapping fragments of Greek, snatches of ancient poetry, talk of almost anything… everything.

'What?' The silhouette moved, abruptly. 'No. No, I am not tired.' A faint sigh. 'I must crave your indulgence a while; I was sharp-tongued with you. Tiberias is… merely, I think, a little alone in his own uncertainty.'

' He regrets the King's passing,' Mirrum said dreamily. 'Like the dolorous passing of the Fisher King…'

She caught the quiet curiosity of the Physician's movement. 'It's one of the old tales of Arthur and the San Graal, Physician. It's nothing like Jerusalem, really, but… who knows? Perhaps the King is…The Fisher King was struck the Dolorous Blow, Physician. There was something about the spear of Christ… anyway, he lies on the point of death, his lands laid waste and the fields barren, until the greatest knight comes to answer the question.'

The Physician turned his head, slowly. 'The question?'

'He has to answer it honestly, about whether he can see the San Graal or no.' Mirrum stared, head tipped back, into the tale, her skirts gathered up around her knees. 'False knights won't see it, or will lie and pretend they do, but the true knight sees it clear and true, and then the terrible curse will be broken and the world made blessed again…'

'And the Fisher King?'

'Springs up whole,' Mirrum said, flopping back to lie on the cool stone that rimmed the tricking fountain. 'The story doesn't say much else. But… maybe he springs up into the light, Physician. Somewhere…'

Mirrum stopped, abruptly, appalled. It wasn't a tale. It was real. It was death. The Physician knew the King. _He _wasn't a fable. The King could even now be lying above, perhaps- was that treason? To –

The Physician did not speak. And neither did Mirrum. She sat up, abruptly, and stared breathing hard into the water, locked into a pool of her own misery. Until eventually the Physician's head turned, and peered a little over the balustrade. Not far enough for the twilight to catch any feature – Mirrum saw the pale sheen of linen that cloaked his head, that was all, although she strained her eyes to try to see.

'I think…' the Physician said slowly. 'I think… I am glad, that Tiberias wishes to speak with you. For his sake. But I think I am… grateful, for a selfish reason, that I spoke with you before he ever did.'


	13. Chapter 13

'So!'

Sybilla was quite positively gleeful over Mirrum in the dawn of _'tomorrow.'_ 'Our little petite_ revenante _tries out her claws, hmm? Little kitten learns to play the game of womankind… well; I had expected a squire, my dear, or one of the more foolish knights. Not to net yourself a lord marshal! And no easily susceptible one! Stony, too. The ground is all thorns with the lord of Tripoli!' She looked like a wickedly malicious child in her morning robe, her dark hair shaken out over her shoulders. 'You must tell all! I wish I had your good fortune in the game!'

Mirrum blinked up at her like a sleepy owl, eyes still crusted with sleep. 'What, m'lady?' she said blearily. The price Mirrum paid for the dark-light talks of the night was a steep one, in that it cost her a world of suppressed yawns and drowsiness.

Realisation as to Sybilla's meaning struck like a swift blow to the stomach. 'Oh,' she said glumly, shaking straw out of her hair. 'Did Ammet tell you? It's not true, milady, he does not wish to make me his-'

'Of course Ammet told me, simpleton!' Sybilla said impatiently. 'And I had word this morning, from your long-toothed swain. Fie, old enough to be your grandsire, and coyly asking permission for words like a young fool! What do you mean, it's not true?' This came sharply, in one of the quick about-turns Sybilla was so readily capable of. 'When I have word of it from _him_?'

Mirrum's world, already a somewhat dizzy one from lack of sleep, skittered sideways alarmingly.

'Oh, not in so many words, girl –' Sybilla had caught the wide-eyed look of incredulity and laughed at it, somewhat bitterly. 'Like my first husband – a kindly old man, hmm? Perhaps it is for the best. But he sent a messenger asking if he could have speech with you this evening. Surely that is _something?'_

Milady, not everything is how your own life plays out… But Mirrum thankfully did not let that thought have a voice. 'I … I think he would like a listener, more than a mistress, milady,' It was a dutiful echo of someone else's words, but nonetheless true.

'He seems a little… lonely.'

'A mistress is _ample_ for that as well as…why, you look so solemn! Am I wrong?' Sybilla looked startled. 'No, surely not…well,' she continued briskly. 'I cannot say anything about you, _petite revenante_. Loyal, silent – a true little ghost indeed. But I can't read you. And I daresay Tiberias can't venture there either.' She looked oddly at Mirrum. 'How old are you? I never tell ages from faces. They lie so readily.'

'Nineteen summers, my lady…'

'So much? And not eager for a husband? Or at least a lover?'

Mirrum flushed hotly, and shook her head. 'Never thought 'bout it,' she murmured, lying through her teeth. Although perhaps not a lie she would admit to a confessor. Nor even, in a dim, self-conscious way, the Physician…

'Well, then – whether you are to be his _mistress_ or _not_,' Sybilla sounded a little put out, 'You should know _something_ of the man…'

Sybilla made a good storyteller. Perhaps her day had been idle and promised little amusement. Perhaps her interest was only piqued by the lemon-juice yellow complexion of her plain serving girl, who ensnared such guarded politicians. But she dropped tale after tale until Mirrum floated in a web of old gossip and lineages and old battles. Things only _courtiers_ muttered to each other.

Tiberias was almost a king in his own right. Mirrum would never have guessed it; he had a vaguely world-weary, hard-bitten edge that spoke of some hard climb from a lowly place. But his grandsire had been descended from the great Raymond who had travelled in the wake of the First Crusade. Mirrum had read of him as one of the many noble names inscribed in the histories. And his ancestors had certainly not been idle. Sybilla recounted it all in a singsong voice she used for the tutelage of her son, her voice rising and falling with each incident. Until she arrived closer to the past of the present Tiberias. Then she spoke quickly, with a sort of vicarious delight in past scandal.

'I would advise you,' she said softly, 'to be careful where you tread in questioning him about that. If you feel inclined to ask him yourself, and particularly his… childhood. And his father. Although that, of course, remains an open question. The august Lord Raymond that was … was a jealous man. Perhaps with… reason, shall we say? He hated the mother of the children _supposed_ to be his.' Sybilla's kohl-blackened eyes held a gossip's glitter 'Bastards,' she whispered, confidentially, in a rustle of cobalt blue silk. 'A polite fiction of the Court, of course. I doubt Tiberias would be quite so grim a man were he not steeped in original sin up to the neck. A priest refused to baptise him, they say , at birth…'

A hard climb, Mirrum retraced her thoughts, from a lowly place. With treacherous footing to start with.

'He started a vicious campaign of vengeance for a slight to his sister's birth when he was younger. Practically sacked the coastline for months on end. In the weapons of state he is utterly unyielding…'

'A great lineage to end in such a strange branch… does credit to his place as Lord of Tripoli, but they say… they say…'

'People are just people,' Mirrum said, to her own astonishment. The words had sprang skittishly out of her mouth like an irritated circus pony. 'It's hard to be judged on blood alone.'

Sybilla smiled.

'So my father thought. And he is a careful man. An excellent politican.' Sybilla got up to brush briskly at the hem of her cloak, where one of her scenting hounds fawned at her heel. 'But then, so am _I_. Politicians do not always make _good_ people.' She gave her twisted lemon-bitten smile, like a warped reflection of the other one. 'I shall look on with interest,_ petite revenante. _You have my _word_ on that.'

It may be of slight interest to know that Lord Tiberias was grimly amused by the arch insinuations of Sybilla. Sybilla, who was little more than a wilful child in paint and patches to him, dressing for an invisible audience. Ah well. Guy left in a few days. She was getting restless with the prospect of freedom already. Perhaps she would hare away to her estates, or linger a little longer at court, until the dust from Guy's hooves had settled. The suspicion half-flattered the dusty tatters of the Lord of Tripoli's vanity, at any rate. Although he felt a slight twinge of pity for the pale child, especially when she came with her hands twisted awkwardly behind her back like a schoolboy fearing the birch rod. Tiberias had chosen the deliberate anonymity of the Lord Marshall's office for the meeting. It made him feel more like a scolding Latin master than ever, in retrospect.

'Tush! I shan't eat you,' he said irritably - for Mirrum had hovered uncertainly on the threshold, as though hardly daring to take a pace further. 'I'm an old dog with no growl, if anything. No wolf. Sit! No, wait –' For Mirrum promptly ventured with stiff back and clawed fingers towards a seat. 'I mean – sit, if you like. Or stand. God's bones, I'm not used to courtesy – sit, please.'

Mirrum sat, biting her lip. 'Yes?' she said, carefully, before suddenly shooting a glance like a crossbow bolt, direct and startlingly piercing.

'I'm not to be your mistress, am I?' she said bluntly.

'Good God!' Tiberias reeled as though struck, before half-getting up. 'S'Blood, you're direct, aren't you?' a curdled half-smile formed on his lips. 'Gossip, eh? Well, let them talk. No, I do not intend to make _you_ my mistress, nor anyone else, for that matter. It's past my time in life…Sybilla put that into your head?'

'I didn't think it was true,' Mirrum said honestly. 'But…'

'Hah! Damn expensive, mistresses,' Tiberias said brusquely, with a wave of his hand. 'Seen men who had 'em. Godfrey, for one, was a fool for women. Squabbling like a harem of chickens, and twice as shrill. And they drink gold like rainwater. Mistresses! Bah!' He smiled, though, the tension dispelled. 'Truthful, aren't you? Say what's on your mind.'

He got up, with a grimace, and crossed to the wine flagon, deftly adding a pinch of spices with the practised air of one who drank alone, often. But he poured for two.

'I asked you here, i'truth,' he said ruefully over one shoulder, 'as an opponent.'

'An opponent?'

'I hope you play chess, girl?'

'Oh!' Mirrum blinked, for the first time, at the board set out on the carved table. It was finely carved, the squares inlaid pearwood and mahogany. A beautiful thing. 'I've played it a few times before.'

'With _Sybilla_?'

'Oh no! With Dame Juliana…' Mirrum pulled a face as Tiberias made a mock shudder. 'Believe it or no, she was a savage player. No prisoners. And her daughter didn't care for it…Besides, I've played games like it… better games.'

'What's that?' Tiberias said sharply, handing Mirrum the cup of spiced wine as though he entertained some fellow head of state. 'Better? Tush, I think not. All the world of governance is on a chessboard. Godfrey's an old hand, but we've worn each other too well over the years. No surprises in the game any more. And Godfrey…' he sighed. 'Well, if I play him again it will be a different sort of game. God knows what he'll find in France. I'd sooner play the Devil than de Lusignan. Sybilla thinks me a toothless old lecher, apparently –' and he raised his eyebrows in such a sardonic fashion that Mirrum had to hide her laughter in the cup. 'So. I find I would like to play someone whom I know has wit. Whom I know has the element of surprise. A different sort of game than Sybilla had in mind, I daresay, but-'

Mirrum stared down at the board, the blankly smiling bishops and gaunt-faced queens forever frozen in defiance across the board, and then lightly touched a pawn with the tip of a finger, nudging it gently out into an opening move.

_Click._

* * *

_France makes a poor gaming-board for Fate to play at chance with the lives of men. Especially this province. It is unlike the sun-warmed seas of Marseilles, and as different to Palestine as summer is to winter; two extremes brought into sharp contrast. The snows makes little swirls in the air, deceptively playful – save for where a flung handful of flakes bites sharp into unprotected faces, scything spitefully into the eyes. It is a lethargic, biting place. Much like the weather, a sharp mingling of sloth and savagery._

_One man looks at the frozen mud of the road. He could be a pawn; a provincial pawn, perhaps: dark-haired, a little sallow, like the people of the province. Although the hard angles of the face betray a heritage that is not all provincial, and… oddly alike. To another. He stares numbly at the imprints of hooves in the earth. Impossible to tell what he feels._

_But underneath the numbed, stony grey indifference to the world – for what does the world hold now but the shadowlands of grief? There is a little curiosity. Once such a revelation would have rocked the boundaries of his world, which extended to milord's lands and no further. It does little now, but perhaps, in his heart, the man Balian thinks of it as a place to put on the horizon – a moment slipped by on the wayside. He does not know yet what desperate course he will have to take the road to the place beyond his world, but the memory is there. It will serve against the stinging goad of the brother – brother of the cloth, maybe, but malicious as a gadfly, forever dashing himself against the elder brother-in-truth's unshatterable grief._

_It will not belong before the grief shatters into the white-hot steel of rage. Perhaps Mirrum moved more than a carved gaming-piece that day, a thousand miles away in another country. Perhaps it echoed some obscure game played by the Deity. But the game begins, and one pawn moves…_


	14. Chapter 14

It began an odd see-sawing of times for Mirrum, the nature of which she did not wholly understand. The games with the gaunt and grim Lord Marshall were entirely based on some freak of caprice; Mirrum never quite forgot that she was a whim. Like a small puppy, perhaps, or one of the stiff-jointed wooden knights with flailing limbs that Baldwin tired of so readily and left lying about in the long grass. Besides, as it so clearly depended on his humour, Mirrum's calls to the dark gloom of his apartments were occasional and slight.

But it made an_ odd_ triangle between them all. Sybilla, the mistress, ruling her duties in the day, and the evenings, Mirrum following her own inclinations in the furtive forays towards the Physician. And now another master, in the form of a few scattered gaming-pieces, and an obscure motive… To Mirrum's chagrin, he was a ferocious player, a cold and careful opponent who often teasingly predicted her own tentative moves before she thought of them, forcing her to change direction and shepherding her pieces across the board as easily as if he were a mongrel shepherd's dog. Mirrum often threw down her pieces in despair, to Tiberias' grinning amusement.

'You give up your king too easily,' he remarked once, surveying the ebony piece lying glumly, face-down, upon the board. It was some two months since the departure of Godfrey, and there were fresh lines about Tiberias' dulled eyesockets that had not been there before. But there was a gentle mocking light in the dark eyes. Mirrum was good for him in that she had no possible political agenda (save for a slight association with Sybilla), and therefore he did not have to weigh his words with her. 'Poor child. A fool's mate won't settle me-'

Mirrum had exasperatedly attempted a ridiculous move that would have ended the game in five seconds had she been playing Baldwin. Prince 'Perseus' was still at the point where he preferred to re-enact battles of his own, rather than create new ones using the rules of chess.

'I'll fool you one day,' Mirrum retorted, making a smiling sally for a knight. 'You'll grow tired, and forget.'

'Fool's mate? Hah! I think not. You're an easy challenger.' Tiberias idly traced a spiral with a captured piece, and then left the half-hearted new game to stand abandoned, reaching over a brisk hand. Ungloved, Mirrum noticed, his hand bore one faintly ink-stained index finger as she shook it, in the business-like play of gamesters the world over.

'Until another night?'

'Yes, my lord,' Mirrum echoed dutifully, already eying the fading light with a calculating stare, weighing up the odds of finding her way through the labyrinth before the light faded. She could still climb the wall; it would not be too late….

* * *

_Hup_… Mirrum swung one leg over the fretworked wall, judged the foothold too glibly, and tumbled over the other side with a sad little cry in a tumble of crumpled linen, muttering something unrepeatable in French, but swift and savage in Anglo-Saxon. The old tongue was the best, in some instances. This one in particular; one foot felt sadly wrenched. It felt worse than it was. She let out a faint gasp in between the oaths.

There was the sound of abrupt movement from above, something clattering on the tiles of the balcony - as though a stool had been knocked over.

'You are not hurt?' The Physician's voice called anxiously. Mirrum's fall had not been graceful, and it had been decidedly awkward. 'Lady?'

'No – no,' Mirrum panted breathlessly, righting herself with a dizzy air. 'I came as soon as I could. I hope you don't grow weary of my company, Physician…'

A faint voice within her felt absurdly pleased in the midst of her mortification. _Ah._ The Physician had been concerned for her, a generous sop to her ruffled pride at falling over the wall.

'Tired, never.' The Physician said firmly. 'Astounded at your constitution, yes. Tell me, were your kinfolk owls, Dane-Lady? Are you descended from the screechers of the night?'

Mirrum looked puzzled. 'Not at all. Why?'

'Because if I judge aright, you have hared straight from the Lord Tiberias.' There was a blunt note that could not be denied there. 'Unless you live in the night, perhaps, I would have thought you _might_ be a little weary of me…'

'Never!' Mirrum said fervently, gritting her jaw so as not to let the yawn stretching inside burst out. It was _true_. Mirrum perhaps was in a little danger of slight idolatry, for there was something almost sacred about the walled garden, the featureless face of the guardian above. Like God – only with enough happy flaws to be man, and enough kindliness to stir the warmth of religious fervour in Mirrum's breast; something she never encountered whilst sitting obediently at Sybilla's side holding her cushion, listening to the dreary Latin monotone of the Patriarch. The stone eyes of the carved disciples were nothing to the unseen eyes of the Physician…

There was a slight surprised pause in the conversation, as though the note of desperate fervour in Mirrum's voice had taken the lordly apothecary aback, a little. It did not brook jest.

'I thank you,' he said gently, 'for your fidelity, Dane-lady. And your friendship. But…' he scrutinised the swaying figure grasping dizzily at the lip of the stone fountain.

'I think you look belies your words,' The Physician said decidedly, and half smiled, to himself. A private smile. Mirrum would have been amazed to think her quiet Physician was able to feel as absurdly pleased as she at a few words. Just a handful of words.

'If I tire you…'Mirrum began anxiously,

'You don't overtax me. My nights are restless enough.'

Was that a slight note of bitterness? In the kindly Physician? He corrected himself abruptly, almost savagely. 'The King.' He said shortly. '_His_ nights are ill. Yours should not be so.'

It was true, in a crooked, half-formed sense of the truth. With duality will always come a little loathing, and in being the Physician – it was possible to shed the distant aspect of the King like a polluted snakeskin.

But Mirrum knew nothing of this, and was a little unnerved. Of course. Everyone had their little patches of darkness, but the Physician had talked so lightly of the King in the past she had thought he held him in easy regard. The sudden cold acid had startled her. But the cowled head moved as though directing an invisible smile at Mirrum like a gentle arrow, and the mood changed in a moment from dark to light. 'For _your_ sake, not for mine,' he said kindly. 'Do you wonder I think you an owlet, Dane-lady? You droop like one forced abroad in daylight. Better let alone. For merely a few nights…' Mirrum had opened her mouth to protest, furiously. 'Believe me, Dane-lady… as long as you have words to speak…'

Mirrum fell silent; but it was another sort of silence, her cheeks colouring as though in the heat of an open fire. It was the sort of courtesy she was not used to; and there had been an odd, cracked note that sounded jarring, hasty…

'As long as I have words, then,' she said lightly, plucking at her skirts once more. 'You have my oath on that.' She didn't look up. She was no more than a circle of frowsy silver hair and spindly shoulder blades from above. Even that quiet note of grave, mutual fidelity in friendship struck a strong chord. It took considerable effort for both Mirrum to drag her gaze from the ground and for the Physician to remember his _Marcus Aurelius_:

"_Thou wilt die soon, and thou are not yet free from perturbations."_

The crabbed Latin did not quite do the sentiment full justice. But it stood well, for now, in a handful of words.

* * *

Tiberias, his eyes straining in the flickering light of candles, stared at the muddy, ill-scrawled missive laid reverently on his desk. He recognised both the careless, angular hand and the seal; only one man was capable of making his letters look like spear-heads. He grunted and broke the wax. Godfrey. The old fool wasn't dead yet, then. Word from Messina, no less –

Raymond of Tiberias was not a man easily taken aback. But he let out a faint muffled exclamation that alarmed the dust-caked messenger swaying wearily at his side, and reread the message, to make sure his brain did not deceive him. Two, three more times he read the parchment, and then calmly crumpled it up in one hand.

'From _Messina_?'

'Sent ahead aboard my vessel, milord.' The man bowed, respectfully. 'Only fortune and good trade that carried it so far to its destination. We did not expect the roads to be so guerdoned on the Jerusalem way…'

'Hmmph.' Tiberias took in the dust. 'Have a cup of wine before you go,' he said grudgingly, opening the crackled parchment a little, to peer at a handful of letters that both elated and dismayed him. Two words could just be glimpsed held in his mailed fist…

'My son…'

Now, Tiberias knew a little of the facts of Godfrey's pilgrimage; a younger son fleeing in horror from the prospect of eternal hellfire. Inspired by some foaming friar with a fierce emphasis on sins of the flesh, Tiberias suspected, but it was a sense of guilt, perhaps, for the swollen belly of the blacksmith's wife that sent Godfrey haring away from the cold sufferance of his elder brother and away to warring. He had always wondered, Godfrey. Perhaps having been with real kindred for twenty years had made him long for it. Had he a son? Had the babe died before anything could come of it? Was there some creature out there with Godfrey's wild impulses and his sharp jaw? Tiberias had always wondered what there had been in some villein-bound blacksmith's wife to keep Godfrey in sorrow for so many years afterwards. His own youth had not been marked by quite so profound a passion as that which held his sword-companion in thrall.

But it wasn't the prospect of some thrallish Breton bastard of Godfrey's that made Tiberias bite his lip and knit his brows together. It was the shaking, wandering hand of a man in pain, unlike the true sharp script Godfrey used. This had been written by a man in something close to the throes of a deathbed, from which there was no revival. No appeal. Godfrey had been thought dead before, only to return with his amiable inward-turning smile, but Tiberias – Tiberias feared, in the throes of his own soul; perhaps thinking of the inevitable deathbed that lay in wait for himself, in turn. Godfrey was some seven years younger than himself. It was a hard and bitter part of the road when the young fall first; to that not unkindly Lord of Bones, the relentless reaper took the best of the crop as choice harvest.

_No wonder_. Hah. Perhaps Godfrey had known the pilgrimage to his past would be the last. That misbegotten son was his legacy, whatever that might be. A pleasant thing, to have a living relic of oneself…

Tiberias looked blindly down at the paper, and then slowly held it to the flame of the light until there was nothing but the crumbling of black, crimson-edged ash dusting the desk and turned away to the flagon of spiced wine. He slowly drew a generous cup, blinking, and then held it towards the light.

'Here's to you then, eh? Godfrey?' he said aloud. '_Resquiat in pace, _living or dead, old friend. A mercy's breath for the old who remain behind to get… older.'

And in the shadows of the vaulted arches, Raymond of Tiberias drank deep for his sword-companion until the darkness lengthened and the wine grew to a sullen dribble in the glass…


	15. Chapter 15

In Messina, the sea wind blows back a breath of seaweed and slicked rope back into the faces of those who board the ships. The boat the new, freshly orphaned, yet oddly desolate Baron of Ibelin takes is a creaking hulk, one of the last of the season to take the sea road to the Holy Land. Winter pilgrims have to take the long and winding pilgrim road through the Holy Roman Empire and down, until they can take a boat across to Cyprus and from thence to the Holy Land. It's a long and exhausting route. The boat from Messina flies straight as an arrow by repute and comparison.

_It's a hard feeling. The travel of the road; and, perhaps, a greater understanding of the feeling that propelled his true father to seek him out leaves Balian the knight, the man of property and renown, feeling alone. And - more than a little sorrow for the man who left him the legacy of choice. Something a villein bound in labour to his master has never possessed. Choice is something that glitters like the waters of the Mediterranean, bright, strange, and unreadable, and it allows him to stand a man of his own worth. Not a murderous blacksmith swinging in his tarred chains; not a bound drudge worn down by grief and rage. A man on his own terms._

* * *

'That, of course, is the beauty of bastards,' Tiberias remarked musingly. Somewhat enviously; whilst his own dubious parentage was a spur in the side to _him_, he envied the unseen son the beauty of being able to be what he was with no prick of dishonour about him. 'They make their way in the world without any hindrance of alliance to lands, or titles…'

He was sitting peaceably with the Lady Sybilla in the white colonnaded court of the feasting table; a deserted table now, with a few half-forgotten dishes of fruit and wine left idly upturned. Nobles only attended but listlessly when the reigning powers were absent – Guy de Lusignan, in this case. There was some talk of Reynaud de Chatillon returning, but then he was like an old fox – too pre-occupied with savagely snapping at the fluttering prey of the trade caravans from Syria. Something he could better attempt when away from the disapproving eye of court and public disgrace. Tiberias and Sybilla held the place very much at their leisure, at present.

Sybilla dipped two henna-swirled fingers in a pool of spilt wine, absently drawing spirals on the soaked cloth. Her face looked wistful within the whirl of blue gauze she had drawn shroud-like over her dark hair, a little tempered with regret.

'I loved Godfrey,' she said softly. 'Are you sure he will not return, Tiberias? I don't begrudge the son, but…' she half-smiled. 'When I was thirteen I half-conceived a notion I might have been given in marriage to him, you know. He was a fine man in those days; Poor creature I was, with my calf-love!' There was a hint of nostalgic mischief hovering about her lips, perhaps remembering a gangling, dark-haired sprite that was so very different from the Sybilla of today.

'What would have happened if that had been so?'

'Godfrey wouldn't have had you,' Tiberias said ruthlessly, a drawn smile creasing his own. He remembered the sprite too. ' And if he had you'd have quarrelled unceasingly. I know him. Always stubborn.'

'Hah! Yes, Tiberias. You should know.'

'Too much politics, eh? He preferred things… uncomplicated.'

'Who wouldn't, Tiberias?' Sybilla said plaintively: in the voice of the girl she was, not the woman she was forced to be. 'Nevertheless I dreamed until old Geoffrey – well! He wasn't an unkind husband. But the world is a different place with Godfrey gone from it, and a son in his place…'

Tiberias gave a slight shrug, masking the sad wassail of the night before with a show of indifference. 'He might not be gone, Sybilla – but I doubt it. The letter spoke too true of shadows.'

Sybilla looked thoughtful. 'Mm. And the son?'

'What? Oh, he spoke much and said little about _him.'_ Tiberias said wearily, stretching his twinging leg with a grimace. ' Half the letter was about my son – and, you know, he hardly said two words about him? Whether he's fitted for Godfrey's place – who knows? Godfrey _seems_ to believe in his ill-begotten heir. Perhaps he is some noble youth from some minstrel's caterwauls, "with an air of truth and valour."' Eh? Or maybe he's some simpleton who likes raising pigs.'

'France may count in his favour,' Sybilla said quietly, drawing her cloak about her. 'France, I think, teaches a man a good deal about his place in the world.'

In a sense, that was partially what drew Sybilla, in fancy, to the unknown son of Godfrey of Ibelin. France. Oh, France was no guarantee of chivalry; one had only to look at Guy. If anything it was a place of tyrants and the oppressed; no medium in between. And Reynaud de Chatillon was no better example of French nobility. He had fled from his ignoble French lands for bloodstained glory in Palestine. Sybilla felt no curiosity about her husband's absence. That he was gone was quite enough for her. He went cautiously now the Court had discovered his secretive reinforcements.

But… whilst Sybilla had met many French noblemen, and had remained unimpressed, the thought of France, in its verdant mystery and soft tranquillity, charmed her. It was so different from the stinging light and hard rock of Jerusalem and the desert. The arrant lush vegetation about the rivers seemed garish and gaudy, like a sparkling piece of green glass. Not like the soft greens that Sybilla imagined for France. It had the advantage of being a place entirely furnished by her imagination.

So is it any wonder that, thinking with curiosity of this son of Godfrey's brought up next to the earth, she began to robe him, in fancy, with the same soft enchantment of France? He almost became France, to her. And although she had enough cynicism to expect he might well be a twin of Guy de Lusignan; another boorish fellow newly arrogant with his parentage – there was a dim part of her that expected something else, as another month passed by. She began to seek word of him more eagerly than Tiberias did. One of her lesser servants was instructed to watch for word of him in the baked-brick sprawling house Godfrey had taken for his sojourns in Jerusalem.

* * *

Tiberias remained rather bemused by Mirrum. She showed a listless indifference to chess; and at first she progressed slowly, playing stupidly, with many mistakes. The conversation was the better part of the evenings in the echoing offices of the Lord Marshal. But after only a few games she developed rapidly into a cunning, cautious, and occasionally ruthlessly reckless player, who brought Tiberias' game into confusion. It was an impossible feat in so tardy a player.

It has to be said, Tiberias must have sincerely believed in Mirrum's honour. He would not have credited the fact that Mirrum had a spectral informer – and one who had the advantage of having played the Lord of Tripoli many times. The Physician took discreetly aiding Mirrum as an excellent jest, and he informed on Tiberias _absolutely_. He was always very much pleased when Mirrum reported one of her games as a success.

If Tiberias occasionally felt an odd prick of unease as Mirrum neatly used a gambit only one – just one – person ever used against him, he never showed it. For Mirrum to have learnt it from _Him_ was impossible. But he was often puzzled very much by her hitherto unsuspected skill.

' Have you bartered your soul to best me at chess?' he demanded good-naturedly. 'S'Blood, you needed some form of devilry to do that. Or you've invoked the aid of a saint, although who watches over chess I cannot say…'

Mirrum grinned, amiably. Already she and the Lord Marshall were more friends than master and servant. It was a different set of terms altogether. Besides, she valued his friendship so much she was willing to share something she had not even thought to tell the Physician…

'I told you,' she said easily, enjoying the praise, 'milord, when we first played – there are better games than chess.'

Tiberias snorted derisively.

'Truth, on my life! Look…' Mirrum knocked over a bishop with her sleeve in her haste to gesture at the board. 'Beg pardon, my lord…I've never fought a battle. You have. You can tell me something. When did you ever see two forces , _exactly the same_, so neatly fight things out? Exactly the same men? All healthy? All fresh for a fight?'

'Never.' Tiberias admitted. 'If we could fight battles with wooden soldiers, now, life might take a different turn.' He smiled. 'Good reasoning, for a maid.'

'My father talked of the battles my grandsires saw.' Mirrum said bluntly. 'And I've read of war. But…' she glanced sharply at Raymond of Tiberias, noting the harsh lines of weariness prickling his forehead. There looked to be a little more grey peppering the old grizzled bear's temples than before. 'You can keep a secret?' she said quickly. 'A solemn and deadly one?'

'Do you have a solemn and deadly secret to tell? – Not politics, I hope?'

'What! No, no… it's… ' Mirrum bit her pale lip. 'A private matter.' She leapt up from her seat. 'I shall return – I… have something to show you. If you swear on the bones of Becket not to tell,' she added, severely. 'Ever.'

Tiberias caught back the laugh forming in his throat at the hopping pale girl's solemnity, and put on a grave face. 'By my troth, I pledge silence.'

Mirrum nodded, and then slid hastily out of the room, her feet slapping hastily down the cloistered passage as she broke into a furtive trot, before disappearing out of sight.

Tiberias took a moment to allow himself the laugh. 'Good grief,' he murmured, under his breath. 'Odd child…'

Tiberias had taken a few slow months of realisation to grasp a fundamental truth about himself, once he was clear of politics; it was a lonely life. A great destiny, perhaps, to meddle in the affairs of men, but a high and lonely one, and it had never provoked in him the vague thought of finding a wife and making kin for himself. Somehow there had never been the time, and then age crept up on you before you quite knew where you were, and it was too late to think of it for Raymond of Tiberias. Not because it was, you must understand, but because he felt an immense weariness at the thought of the whole tedious process. Besides, whilst his lands were eminently desirable, the court looked upon him slightly askance, as one from a dubious lineage. It would be no more, at best, than a marriage of convenience to some indifferent widow – here Tiberias conjured up a thought of the squawking Dame Juliana and shuddered – or some gawking younger daughter. The example of his parents' hatred was one that haunted the Lord Marshall like a bloodstained ghoul.

Whereas _Mirrum_ was rather like acquiring some distant relation, with the advantage she could be sent away once he grew tired of her – not often, it has to be said. But if he _wanted_ to, he could. Or perhaps some cheerful daughter whose dowry one didn't have to consider. Yes.

Slap-slap, slap-slap… Mirrum was returning, but at a more measured pace than her hurried dash through the cloisters. She emerged into the light holding a leather sack clutched protectively to her chest as though it were her first-born son.

She sat down startlingly, blinking gravely at Tiberias. 'This was my grandsire's.' she said. 'And his before his – before we were ever baptised in Britain, I think. It's a … heathen game.' She looked abashed. 'From the days of Odin. But it's better than chess.' Reverently, she undid the strings that bound the sack, and placed a handful of gaming pieces on the desk before him.

They were misshapen things. Crudely carved from bone, with blank, staring eyes, and the rounded helms of the Saxons – save for a wild-eyed king-piece, with a naked sword laid across his knees as thought waiting for some dread assassin. The rest were mere guardsmen.

'You've lost half the pieces.' Tiberias said bluntly. 'Where's the rest?'

'There aren't any.' Mirrum removed a crackled leather roll from the sack and unfolded it, revealing a makeshift board tooled into the leather. 'Just what you see before you.' She looked wary. 'Do you think I'm a heretic? My father wouldn't play _Hnefatatl_ with me.'

'That sounds like a mouthful of nails.' Tiberias remarked. 'Explain.'

'Twelve knights –' Mirrum arranged the pale pieces neatly in a defensive square at the centre of the board. 'Twenty-four on one side, twelve on the other. And –'

'You've mislaid the opposing king…'

'No.' Mirrum said firmly. 'There's only ever one king, my lord. You see? Twenty-four, a much larger army _here…'_ she gestured, 'Surrounds this army _here._ Four groups of six, at the edges of the board, and all advancing on the centre. You see? It takes much greater skill, far more thought, to win, with lesser numbers, and a surrounding force all about you. It takes subtlety.'

Tiberias touched the wild-eyed king with the tip of a finger, so he rocked in his place. 'And the single king? What does he do?'

'He doesn't fight.' Mirrum laid her chin on her hands and looked down at the game with delight, pleased by Tiberias' obvious interest. 'And he can win the game by one move, even if he's cornered, and all his forces are dead. By… withdrawing. See the squares at the corners of the board? The patterned ones? They're an escape. A sanctuary. Once you're there, the game's won and the world's right again. Of course, that's hard to do unless you're practised. If you're playing someone who knows how to use the opposing side, you can cut them off, king and all. But it's a good game…'

Tiberias nodded, suddenly sober. 'Odd. I almost mislike it for being so truthful,' he said uneasily. 'I'm not sure I'd be able to separate the notion of it coming true, if I took it up. You play it well?'

Mirrum pulled a face. 'Better than chess…'

'And you best me so readily at that…' Tiberias grumbled – but he gave the carved king a consolatory pat, giving the lie to his mutterings. 'Very well, then. Your turn to tutor me, lady. I'll play… the King's side.'


	16. Chapter 16

Somewhere in the dust and dirt of the plains surrounding Jerusalem, a horse whinnied plaintively, displeased at yet again being made to carry another burden. The man seated on it patted its neck abstractedly, with a soldier's air; only young fools treat good horseflesh as though it is offal. Old campaigners have the wit to see a horse is as much an ally as the man standing next to you and the armour you carry; and in any case, this man was not inclined to cruelty. He had much to think about.

A casual bystander would have noted the proud eyes and loose-limbed grace of a Syrian nobleman in the rider. He was certainly a warrior. There was a wary feline grace about the way he sat in the saddle; like a panther in human form. And he did not _quite _have the air of a pilgrim, even a soldierly one. Anyone with an eye for detail could recognise one of _Salahuddin's_ brethren – who knows? Perhaps he could even be kin to the great Saracen prince himself. It was not impossible, with the taut bearing and confident air, belonging only to those in a position of power.

A _keen_ observer would have noticed both a certain bemusement in the man's mien, and the occasional shake of the head he would give to the horse, as though confessing his puzzlement at the vagaries of man. **One** man in particular.

'The new one, eh?' he said aloud. 'The new one. _Not_ the old one. Ibelin is grown young! Well. We shall have to see, my friend, heh?' He addressed the last part of his sentence to the horse, which gave an almost human snort as it tossed its mane in equine disapproval. The Syrian knight gave it another absent-minded pat. It was a_ long_ journey back to Damascus. And he was still faintly light-headed at the simplicity with which he had been released. In a world of tenuous and uneasy peace, simplicity was something to be respected and admired in a Frankish knight. It was encountered so seldom, after all. 'And both of us free at the end of it. Now_ that_ is unexpected. Honour amongst the Franks is not so rare after all. What can it mean, hmm?'

The horse rolled one brown eye in its grave, elongated face.

'Tcha! I talk politics with a horse.' There was enough easy self-mockery in the man for him to smile at his own mild folly. 'You're wiser than most, my friend. You keep your own counsel. But I have to decide for myself, now, what to do with our friend from the desert, hmm? As a horse, what would you-'

He stopped, abruptly. Outlined on the very ripple of bleak rock ahead, there was a single rider, who watched the approach of the dust-stained two with a watchman's eye. He broke into a canter towards them as the Syrian raised one hand in salute. The encampment of _Salahuddin _had been reached, after all.

Lord Imad shrugged off his levity, like a cloak that rolled at his feet, and urged his stubborn mount towards the rider. A mailed seneschal, with a quick, olive-skinned Egyptian face - and an old sword-brother.

'I was told to wait, my lord,' he said mildly, inclining his head. There was a faint smile on his face; Imad he knew of old. 'Lord Salahuddin expected you… eventually.'

'Like an ill-minted _crescent_, Imad always turns up, hmm?' Imad returned wryly. 'Lord Salahuddin sees far. I was forced to take a somewhat circuitous…detour, Ashal. Courtesy of our Frankish neighbours…No.' this was said flatly. Ashal's eyes had strayed enquiringly to the road as though expecting another to follow behind. 'He won't come by that road. Dead.'

'Dead?' Ashal's face set, one muscle twitching convulsively in his cheek.

Imad shrugged. 'Partly through his own pride, partly through the heat of the sun… I would not say the Baron of Ibelin killed him. Many things killed him.' He lirruped encouragingly to his mount, urging him on. 'I must report to Lord Salahuddin, Ashal. First. Before anything. If anything.'

'This will mean war-!'

Imad wheeled his horse around, sharply. '**No!'** he said tersely. 'No, it will _not_. You are a young blockhead, Ashal. I am minded to send you back to mind my kinfolk in Hamah. Now, **I** may consider it an illuminating encounter with the adversary, but my opinion does not matter – and _neither does yours_. It is for Lord Salahuddin to decide when war shall be. **Not** you, and not _now.'_

Ashal's face creased into sudden anger at this sharp rebuff; but he mastered his feelings and spoke steadily.

'Lord Salahuddin awaits, my lord.' He said stiffly.

Imad found himself vividly impressed by the reason for the rule of Salahuddin, whenever he entered the great man's presence. It showed the difference between the rule of young hotheads like Ashal, and the rule of a wise man. He bowed low as he approached the tent, Ashal stiffly and sulkily making his obeisance beside him.

'My lord…'

Salahuddin, at this point, was not a young man. He had the measured walk of a careful general mingled with a scholarly air; making an odd contrast with the arms he bore as 'king of the Saracens.' The first impression was of a kindly teacher rather than a maker of empires. But Imad never failed to see the sharp patrician nose and hawk-like profile of his master without a sharp pang of pride. There were few men who could claim a leader such as _this._

'My lord,' Imad echoed Ashal's greeting. 'Forgive my late-coming.'

'You are always forgiven, Imad, as well you know.' Salahuddin said, nodding to dismiss the young Egyptian. 'Come – you must have much to explain of your journey, as you return late, dust-stained, and _alone._ I surmise an attack…?'

'A fair quarrel,' Imad said suddenly. He had not meant to say it quite so soon; he had planned to discuss, to test, but the thought of war over that dusty figure from the desert? No. He smiled, mirthlessly.

'It was a… test of human nature that I began,' he said, by way of explanation. 'In fair fight, with one combatant alone, lord. Practical philosophy, if you like.'

'I could wish your experiments in practical philosophy did not cost me men, Imad.'

'That was unexpected. I shall make amends to his family in Aleppo –'Imad shrugged. 'I have prayed for him. And so has his enemy, for that matter.'

'Who was he?' Salahuddin looked curiously at him. 'This pious enemy? No Templar…'

'He was – a man, this new Ibelin. More than a man, perhaps.' Imad frowned, trying to recall the moment. 'Strange; I never felt envy for a fellow-man before, but – he _could _have slaved me. I pretended to be other than what I was…'

'That does not surprise me.'

'No, Lord. It would not. He released me. Gave me a mount to set me on my way…' Imad grimaced. 'If a most recalcitrant beast. I envied him his honour, lord. That he behaved thus to –to what he thought was a servant…' Imad's voice trailed thoughtfully away.

Silence, slow and thoughtful, pervaded the hangings of the tent for a brief space of time, like the cool fingers of an evening breeze.

'I would be a fool,' Salahuddin's voice said clearly, 'To make war over this. You feel this too.' Imad nodded.

'Ashal is a fool. He thinks there will be.'

'I would not insult the King of Jerusalem by pretending to be a fool, either. I shall send word – personally, mark you, lest they try to make war from this – to mark this _did not_ break the peace. It was a private quarrel between noblemen. No more, no less. And he was provoked, yes? By your…' Salahuddin smiled, ironically. '_Practical _philosophy. It is good to know there are men of honour amongst the Franks – if difficult for what lies ahead.'

'Yes, my lord.' Imad rose, bowing. 'I thank you for your understanding.'

'I thank you for your honesty. I have knights would have made me believe lies instead of truth…. Oh, I forget. My lord Imad?'

'Lord?'

'Tell your young hothead of a nephew Ashal he may rest easy and let his sword alone, for now. War will come before it has time to rust.'

Mirrum squinted at the crabbed writing on the scroll and wished the light were better. The Latin was hard to decipher, and at times tested Mirrum's knowledge of the language to its limits, but – for the Physician…

Mirrum found herself drowning, pleasantly, beneath a sea of learning, a forest of scholarship that extended her own until she owned acres of knowledge. Hectares of it. If knowledge could be transformed into land, Mirrum would have been an_ empress _to herself – compared with the slight, pitiful timidity with which she had proffered so long ago to Lord Tiberias as slight evidence of her knowledge.

Perhaps it was the tutelage in chess, which had inspired the Physician, or maybe it was merely a kindly and interested wish to spur her on in her hard-won education. Whatever it was, whenever Mirrum climbed the wall now, there would be something left on the lip of the cracked stone fountain; a scroll (for the leather of books perished quickly in the heat of the Eastern sun; far better entrusted to papyrus, like ancient forbears before them) of something prized. At first it was a collection of old Breton lays loosely collected together, but Mirrum progressed rapidly, and she climbed higher – from Cato to Virgil, Virgil to Homer –

There had been a spray of white jessamine laid carefully between the parchment roll of the Aenaeid.

Although she grew a little disappointed; she had hoped to catch, one day, a glimpse of the Physician. Better yet, perhaps one day – her imagination furnished the details – one day she would climb the wall and find a quiet figure sitting there as though he had always been there, waiting for her to arrive. She tried to give him a face, from studying the faces of the squires and scribes of court. What would he look like? Would he have a handsome face? A plain one? It hardly mattered; for Mirrum was a little more than half lost in adoration for the voice alone – but she demanded a face to match the voice, and she could get no further than deciding it might be quick, perhaps lean – like a younger and less bitter Tiberias, but with a quick lifting of the brows. Maybe lighter, too – he would be fair. Not handsome, but have a quick, intelligent face, and kind eyes…

She never found a face at court to match it. And somehow, she never managed to voice the question as to whether she would ever see his face. Sometimes she suspected never; but would he be the Physician still, if she _saw_ him? Mirrum was learning patience. Especially when patiently deciphering Catullus' _Carmine_.

Ille mi par esse deo videtur… Mirrum painstakingly translated that inside her head, and continued to the next line. Ille, si fas est, superare divos…

There was more, the last line marked with a sharply drawn mark on the page, but Mirrum had not even time to read the last line before the agitated swish of saffron silk sounded just outside Mirrum's room.

Sybilla.

Hastily, Mirrum shoved the scroll under her mattress, frantically trying to stuff it out of sight before –

'_Petite revenante!_ I bring word from the city of – Oh._'_ Sybilla appeared in the doorway, her fine eyebrows arched at Mirrum's flushed face. 'Have I disturbed your orisons, little ghost?'

'What – I… I… n-no, lady!' Mirrum sprang to her feet, trying to kick the blanket as she rose. One end of the scroll still showed guiltily out from under the straw pallet. 'I was not…praying…'

Sybilla's gaze snagged on the roll of paper. She was too subtle herself to miss a clumsy attempt at concealment. 'No _indeed_,' she said quietly, a strange smile forming on her lips. 'You are spared your duties today, my ghost. We go riding –'

'Riding?'

Sybilla stared at her. 'Don't be obtuse, little ghost. You can ride, I trust?'

'Like a sack of wheat chaff, my lady…' Mirrum felt a faint prickle of apprehensive curiosity. What was this fresh plan of Sybilla's? There was a daring glint in one blue eye Mirrum had never seen before; a flush of elated glee at some fresh undertaking. 'I am spared – my duties? With the prince…'

'_Ammet_ will see to that,' Sybilla spoke over her shoulder, casting one of her secret smiles over one shot-orange silk sleeve. 'I trust Ammet, my ghost, with my affairs… most of the time. Not all of the time. And for now it amuses me to ride out, with you, and an escort, to pay court to… well...' She shook her head, an odd look crossing her face. 'He's here, the Ibelin. I fancy I would like to take a look at him before anyone else. Fancy that! A conqueror of a great lord of Syria! He fought in single combat! A great triumph – and he creeps into the city like some crippled pilgrim to spend the night in prayer on Calvary. A knight who knows the meaning of humility! And he **still** has not come to court! I will wait no longer; I must see this man…' She glanced appraisingly at Mirrum's plain kirtle. 'That will not do. You must be cloaked. I have a broidered sarcenet cloak you may wear…' she broke off.

Mirrum knew best when to remain silent. Sybilla's face was flushed, excited, like a girl going to her first banquet. Behind the pride and the subtlety the impatience shone through for anyone to see. She expected something from the unseen Baron of Ibelin; demanded something, almost.

I pray she is not disappointed, Mirrum thought, privately, and with a sudden twitch of empathy and pity for the Princess_. Ille mi par esse deo videtur. Ille, si fas est, superare divos…_

" Like a god he seems to me, above the gods…"

Catullus must have known the measure of both Sybilla and Mirrum when he wrote that. It was much how Mirrum thought of the Physician…

Yes, she understood now. Ammet would disapprove. Mirrum was quiet, kept her own counsel. That was why Sybilla plunged her away from little Prince Perseus, on her sad quest for finding _something_ for her mystical France. But nonetheless, Mirrum trembled at being swathed in finery as Sybilla fussed: tugging at the hems, pulling the hood low over Mirrum's pale face so only her chin showed, like the tip of a hen's egg. It seemed so furtive…

'Tush, t'is nothing!' Sybilla draped her own face with a rosy mask to save her from the worst of the dust. 'It's hardly as if we ride out unattended, fool – there's the guard of honour. He must know the privilege we grant him, after all…' she tugged nervously on a strand of her own dark hair. 'What do you think he is?'

'I hardly know…'

'I didn't ask _you,'_ Sybilla stared at her wavering reflection, laughed, almost wildly, and then span around. 'Come! We must make haste.'

It isn't _me_, Mirrum thought miserably to herself; as she snatched a glimpse of her own reflection, walking dutifully behind Sybilla. No more than three paces away. It was a wooden doll, stiff-jointed, walking mechanically behind in the stiff cloak with the beads and the red silk hood. Like a draped effigy of Saint Agnes, all rigid wooden modesty. But that was what Sybilla wanted, after all, or she would have chosen Ammet. Dolls cannot talk, and they cannot question. Mirrum's clumsiness showed Sybilla's fluid grace to better advantage. Ammet would have been a rival.

It was worse in the stables. Mirrum was used to tame trotters with worn-out pedigrees and silver threads in their manes, bad-tempered but quiescent. The Arab grey Sybilla presented her with –

It was a gorgeous animal, true. A pure-bred Arab mare. But stubborn as any mule, and it rolled one magnificent brown eye at Mirrum, quivering with the sort of high spirit that threw people off, easily.

'All she needs is a firm hand –' Sybilla said impatiently, bored of waiting for her maid. She was already mounted, and looked supremely confident upon her own mount. 'Show her who is master, little ghost…'

Mirrum thought a highly colourful oath she had once heard Tiberias use, and gritted her teeth, scrambling up ungraciously into the saddle as though climbing a haystack, and seizing the reins with a terror-clenched hand. She did not dare kick one foot hard into the side to start the horse into a canter, as Sybilla did. She remained frozen, the horse shifting smugly from foot to foot. It took one of the pitying guard to clap her horse lightly on the flank with the flat of his sword; and even then, it stumbled into an ungrateful trot behind the fleeing orange and gold spectre of Sybilla. _She_ looked like the spirit of a Zephyr riding on the wind.

The embroidered meal-bag that was Mirrum followed dispiritedly behind the mounted guard. This felt ill omened from the start…

Sybilla knew the way to Godfrey's house in Jerusalem. She had ridden to it many times; often to do little more than flightily tease the gaunt old soldier, on her way elsewhere, but she was as familiar with it as if it had been her own house. It showed in the way she urged on her horse, the whippet-thin scenting hounds yapping at her horse's hooves as they approached the gateway.

Ah…

There was a cluster of men grouped about an uneasy horse in the courtyard; a few men-at-arms, vaguely familiar to Sybilla. She ignored them as furniture. What interested her was the unfamiliar figure, the one bending with a journeyman's care over the horse's long muzzle to murmur in the soft accent of northern French to it. The one robed as a nobleman, but who showed the same quiet ease that any… blacksmith might show to a frightened horse, to calm it.

Sybilla had not expected that. Nor the face that looked up at her as he raised his head to stare at the stranger in his presence.

Oh, there were touches of Godfrey there in him. The jaw line was his, as was the square line of his shoulders. He was a head shorter than Godfrey, but that hardly mattered once you saw him. What made Sybilla draw in her breath behind her orange face cloth was the arresting blend of the un-wearying patience of a servant, mingled with the quiet, almost ominous confidence of a nobleman. And the soft Italian looks blended in with Godfrey. His mother must have been a rare beauty indeed. It became more powerful when she glanced down at his hands; peasant's hands, large, with stubbed fingers and cracked nails. A man of the earth with the sad eyes of a knight errant from a romance… a second Tristram doing repentance.

Mirrum didn't see with quite Sybilla's softened eyes. As she wretchedly trotted behind her at last, frantically trying to grip with her knees onto the stupid beast, the only thing she saw was a faintly bemused man in blue silk, staring with the faintly stunned expression everyone wore when they first met Sybilla. She peered out from under the hood – he looked kindly, a little young (Mirrum said this from a confident perch of nineteen, some seven years younger than Balian himself) – and perhaps, like her, bewildered in a different place from the mud you started out in. But nothing particularly different from Court. He had a face that listened, that was all.

Sybilla quickly recovered from her initial surprise, and with a demure, yet frankly challenging flash of her expressive eyes, demanded something Mirrum did not quite catch about the 'master.' It was a brief exchange; whether Balian of Ibelin knew how to play Sybilla's games or not, he piqued her by a short, frank reply that spurred Sybilla to lower her veil and grant a quick glimpse of her face, like a saint bestowing miracles.

'Give me some water,' she commanded imperiously, her eyes flickering quickly over his face. She was testing him; seeing whether he was arrogant, pompous, whether he would be discourteous in the face of her own breaking of the rules…

Mirrum's horse took it into its head to sidle viciously sideways at this point, so Mirrum saw nothing more than Sybilla returning the stoup from which she had sipped. But her fingers lingered a fraction longer over his than was quite necessary, eyes still passing lightning quick – from eyes to mouth back to eyes again…

And then Sybilla withdrew, briskly, back into her place as an arrogant princess, slapping the reins sharply against the horse's neck.

'Tell Balian of Ibelin, if you see him,' she announced, apparently to the courtyard at large, 'That… Sybilla called.' And expertly wheeled her horse around, clucking triumphantly to it in Arabic.

Mirrum caught sight of her mistress' face as she followed, daring to dig her heels in to the horse at last. It was the face of a flushed child elated with success – and not a little wonder.

Sybilla halted her palfrey to wait for Mirrum's horse to catch up, pulling her face-cloth over her nose once more. 'You saw!' she declared. 'You saw him. There!'

She repeated that to herself all the jogging, rickety way back to the palace. 'There. We saw him. I saw him…'

And more than once Mirrum caught a glimpse of Sybilla gingerly touching her own face, a private and undisturbed smile forming behind her face-cloth.

.


	17. Chapter 17

But however privately elated Sybilla was, she still remained curious, and, ultimately, rather unscrupulous when it came to curiosity. Apart from the bemused, wondering litany of 'There! We saw him, I saw him, there…' she remained carefully silent on the wandering, more leisurely pace about the narrow streets of Jerusalem. It was as well not to go back just yet. Sybilla was judging the ashen pallor of Mirrum's face beneath the broidered red silk hood, and the odd, staring eyes – too staring, her colour drained from her, her mouth trembling with something other than the terror of her horse. That had vaguely amused Sybilla; it had been a sly jest on her part. But beneath even her own mingled emotions upon seeing Balian of Ibelin, she recognised the feverish nature of some other emotion holding sway in the girl. She was disturbed, outside her normal placid nature.

Sybilla thought she could foresee some things within her own domain.

'So,' she spoke idly, her kohl-ringed eyes glittering. 'What think you of that just now?'

Mirrum averted her head, shaking loose a frowsy strand of pale hair. 'I think nothing of it, my lady. What do you wish me to think?'

'Come, don't play the innocent with me, girl!' Sybilla edged her horse nearer, so she could twitch jestingly at Mirrum's cloak. She cocked her head on one side. 'Do you think me wicked? A slavish, lustful lady of the chronicles?'

Mirrum raised her head.

'Do you want to be, my lady?'

The directness of the question floored the Princess, for a moment. Suddenly she was trapped in a soap-bubble of a memory of two children. One dark, one fair. One (as Sybilla remembers herself with the unforgiving eye of self judgement) was an intense, sharp little thing with eye-watering acridity, and a painful self-awareness sharp as bitter lemon. The other…

He had been the fair one, then. Quiet, compared to the raging furies that Sybilla had endured. Or perhaps he had just burnt quietly inside, rather than out. But she remembered one brief snatch of talk, on one long-lost day…

'**I **_shall be a woman of intrigue, one day. 'Sybilla had been quietly and venomously raging against a prospective betrothal. '_**Without**_ a husband. I shall poison him with monkshood, or – or behead him, on the wedding night…'_

_Poor thing. He had been quite young, then. He had hardly known what his foolish elder sister was talking about. _

'_Only if you __**want**__ to, Scylla.' Scylla had been his private name for her, taken from the raging monster from the Odyssey. Perhaps he had been cheerfully remarking on her temper…So long ago. So innocent. It was as though their past selves lay in some neglected tomb among the quiet dead, rather than one unhappy and the other a l-_

Mirrum's strange echo brought a gnawing to her stomach that felt as though grave-worms were turning in it. It wrung a harsh half-breath from her.

'That –' she began, and then looked into Mirrum's frightened face and repented. She couldn't possibly know **what** associations…. Besides, she needed Mirrum's compliance as a possible ally in a…

Sybilla hardly knew. A tryst? Did she mean that at all? No! That was not… she had been… she hadn't meant…

This was unheard of. Sybilla hated her own mercurial nature when it flung her headlong into uncertainty. She felt she didn't quite understand herself that evening, and it was a feeling she despised, much more so under the unvoiced reproaches of her conscience – and, she felt, her maid. Mirrum had guessed, had she? Well, she had one weapon left in her armoury. She held it in her mind as she amiably turned her maid's horse homewards, towards the Palace. Curiosity is, upon occasion, a useful thing, and Sybilla had certainly not forgotten the roll of parchment Mirrum had hidden so hurriedly beneath her mattress. She did not think Mirrum likely to betray her, after so much. She was embroiled too deep. But just in case… it might be wise to let the girl know, she, Sybilla, knew some of her secrets as well as she knew her mistress…

* * *

Mirrum had forgotten about the parchment. She only realised, bitterly, afterwards, why Sybilla sent her so blithely off toward her charge, a small secretive smile on her painted lips. She had hurried straight to Mirrum's pitiful quarters that she shared with Ammet to find out the secret…

Sybilla had vaguely expected it to be a half-scrawled billet-doux, marking an illicit tryst with some well-favoured French squire. Or ill-favoured. You could hardly tell with Mirrum…

Oh.

Her eyes widened as she unfurled a crackling corner of the scroll. Latin? Some impatient priest? Sybilla vaguely associated Latin only with the pinched clerics about court, forever rustling with their lists and papers and narrow-eyed scrutiny. Like rats making nests in their own wealth. But the roll of paper flicked a faint card of memory behind Sybilla's grey-blue eyes, and she examined the topmost corner carefully.

The _Carmine?_

Sybilla might not be tutored, but she was neither ignorant nor stupid. She had heard of Catullus the poet. She knew the name well indeed, and as she turned the parchment over and over in her hands, an unbelievable suspicion blossomed like a great, dark-edged rose. It could be a different copy. Bah! She shook her head. Impossible for it to be the same one. But there was a dog-eared familiarity in the roll that caused Sybilla's hands to shake – especially when she came to the fourth poem in the roll, the one Mirrum had been valiantly struggling with before the ride…

She had not read so far

There were annotations in the margins. Not in Latin. In French.

There were sharp, deft quill-strokes, darker than the original, but a little faded with age and sun. Sybilla remembered casting a glance over them.

**"Mind well the verbs, and take heed when comparing with Virgil, who is by far the greater scholar."**

The old tutor, so long ago… He had been a gaunt man, half-blind with the weight of all his knowledge piled upon him and all the crabbed writings he had deciphered over the years, and rather severe upon the small, solemn-faced boy in his care. You could see that in…

Oh, the writing! _He_ had been only a babe, Sybilla remembered, a biting sorrow clutching at her again. Scarce six years old. He couldn't mix his inks well, it was why the few, wandering notes in _his _hand were so pale, almost gone from the worn surface of the parchment. The only vague half line the Princess could make out, although her eyes were keen, was the meek phrase '_I obey, rhetor.'_

Mingled with Sybilla's sadness was a bitter rage. How had this fallen into the hands of her maid? This! A maid! And holding the pitifully thin sticks and rags of what had once been her brother…

Had she not been angry enough to shake the scroll it is unlikely Sybilla would ever have found the scrap hidden amongst the roll. And this tale might have had a very different ending with a shorter, more dolorous one for Mirrum. But Sybilla did shake it, violently, and as a result of her ferocious mistreatment a small scrap of paper fell like the feather from an angel's wing to land on the dusty stone floor.

It was still with a heart full of bitter resentment that Sybilla stooped to pick it up again.

And caught herself mid-gasp.

She knew the handwriting.

She had seen it so many times.

That was her own fault, she acknowledged it freely, her own… weakness, that a mere scrap of paper consisted of all there was between herself and her brother. Sybilla was a woman of few terrors and much compassion. But grief is a little-understood thing, and for Sybilla the turn it took was a numbed aversion to even the brief exchanges of words Tiberias took with his liege. She could not bear to think of it. She _would not_ think of it. Better pretend he died, long ago, and the polite, restrained notes scribed by someone else came from the underworld realms of the dead, than have to live with what _he _was. Tiberias was an icy stoic in comparison with the point it touched in Sybilla's heart. But then again, perhaps Tiberias felt more compassion with the creature who was her brother than the sense of self-pitying remorse Sybilla felt for her royal house, in general. The leprosy terrified Sybilla, like some curse that dogged her footsteps, a twisted shadow that followed in the wake of the perfection she tried so hard to attain.

She was ashamed. And, what was worse, shamed by her own cowardice, but it lay like a wall, and nothing could rid her of that.

Except the sudden tide of bile that she swallowed, with difficulty, as she deciphered the paper that was not addressed to _her_. How … _Mirrum_? Not _her?_

_How does the Dane-Lady find Catullus? _

_For my part, his humour wins me more than the solemnities of Herodotus, and the grimness of Virgil is not to my taste. Catullus knows man, and man's flaws, better than either. Humanity is, in my opinion, the one inestimable thing worth knowing about, Dane Lady. You already know much. Learn but a little more, and you may surpass even your poor scholar…_

A slight flaw followed. The quill had blotched part of the parchment. Or _he_ had written in haste. Sybilla's hands trembled violently, so that the scribing danced crazily before her eyes into a mocking cawing of black tailed words. Like ravens. The playful, affectionate tone both jolted and soured her all at once, as well as bewildering her further. The thing was _impossible!_ If even his own sister did not… could not…

Sybilla's mouth had a bitter taste. One of jealousy. He did not write so to _her_. How then did he write to…

She slumped dazedly towards the straw pallet; her eyes fixed on the last few words.

_Written in love and fealty by your own Physician._

She understood even less of the mystery when she read that. But of one thing she was certain – Sybilla grasped her skirts, picking up both the roll and the note, and rose to her feet – that Mirrum would have to answer for it…

Sybilla considered that again, somewhat doubtfully. It looked like her brother's hand, yes – but then again, what if… all these years, it was merely some scribe who wrote for him? And Mirrum was engaged in some harmless little tryst? Sybilla had enough judgement to see that she could wrong her maid – and, what was more, a maid who was steeped in Sybilla's secrets deep enough to plague her were they revealed. These must go carefully before…

'Tiberias,' Sybilla murmured, between her teeth. 'Tiberias will know for sure…'

The slither of her skirts as she swept out left no more trail than that of a desert wind, a few rushes clinging lightly to her hems.

Poor Mirrum! Do not become entangle in the affairs of princes, if you can help it. They like your secrets much less, even, than you like theirs, and Mirrum's was like to cost her dear with Sybilla and Tiberias both.


	18. Chapter 18

Mirrum, to her own, later dismay, suspected nothing throughout the lazy litany of the afternoon. It would have been odd if she had – Sybilla, when she reappeared, kept up a gently amiable mask of disinterest, only a fleeting agitation of her robes betraying her unease. The only thing clouding the pale girl's mind was the uncomfortable weight of Sybilla's trust. What should she make of it all? Whatever the Roman poets knew on the great matters of philosophy and politics (something faintly perplexing to Mirrum), they hadn't words in any language to describe the fluctuations of Sybilla. It was a relief to get back to the happy gambollings of Baldwin about the stone floor – her small, noble charge carefully erecting the field of Thermopylae between two discarded shoes and a dropped surcoat, with the flushed and enthusiastic face of a boyish general. Prince Perseus, unlike his mother, was uncomplicated. He was simple, and friendly, and _better_ than any subtle courtier worth naming. He did not grate uneasily against Mirrum's nerves, or trick her into confidences.

Perhaps something of this flickered across her face. Mirrum was still ungainly, still a little too easy to read, but the court had changed her. Oh, not necessarily for the better; she was nervy, more wary than in days of yore. There had been no _real_ danger amongst the frozen mud and ceaseless rain of the north, after all. But there was also a faint sprinkling of tranquillity that somehow shed a little of the Physician's quietude over the pale sparrow-girl's countenance.

The poor whey-faced _fool_.

Sybilla's thoughts were a little contemptuous, but also just a little… pitying. She did not understand what had taken place. Amidst a whole host of other feelings – distrust and envy vying amongst them - it was just possible to feel _sorry_ for her. There was even a touch of shame in Sybilla's mien, those restless, delicate hands of hers twitching against the folds of her skirts. Mirrum had been a good ally. It would be grave pity indeed to lose her.

Raymond of Tripoli was a complex man. His reaction to the scroll Sybilla threw down in front of him was barely noticeable, unless you knew the man. Sybilla had watched for the eyebrows to knit together in thunderous wrath –

But this did not happen. The Lord Marshal merely held a long stare at the offending article, and then raised his eyes to hers with an expressionless look.

'Well?' he said shortly. His eyes flickered back to the roll of paper, though. It was more familiar to Tiberias than it was even to Sybilla.

'Does it look familiar to you?' Sybilla had demanded.

'Indeed it does.' Tiberias's tone would brook no further talk on the matter, but Sybilla plunged at once into her discoveries. 'Lady – no more…'

'_Is_ it what I think it is? None of your evasions, Tiberias – is it – look!' Sybilla threw down the note, too, as she might have thrown down a serpent that had crawled into a cradle. 'Look at it!'

Tiberias noticed the way she shook the paper off. It was a motion peculiar to the brief exchanges between herself and her brother – that she shuddered, just a little, at the slight taint. As the very words could carry contagion.

It was not calculated to awaken much sympathy for Sybilla in Tiberias' breast. His lines of his face seemed to stiffen.

'Catullus in itself is no treason.' He said neutrally. 'Nor I think, the Carmine, although perhaps somewhat dangerous for a maid –'

'And the conspiracy?!' Sybilla hissed the word across the table at him, her eyes big in her head. She looked hardly older than her son when fearful; there was the same hunted expression, all subtlety slipped from her.

Tiberias caught sight of the even, painstakingly clear hand on the scrap of parchment.

Humanity is, in my opinion, the one inestimable thing worth knowing about, Dane Lady…

Tiberias' look did not change. But his bowed shoulders suddenly sprang back as he let out an indrawn breath from between his clenched teeth, and his hand gently drew the paper closer to him.

'What is this?'

'Is it not plain?' Sybilla had had time to consider a darker, blacker motive – and this time without considering she might blacken Mirrum beyond saving. 'See the end?_ 'Written in love and fealty by your own Physician?' _If this is not the shameful tryst I wish I could believe it to be – for God knows I wish it could be something that paltry – then it is some foul conspiracy between my brother's _own physician_ and my maid!'

'You think so?' Tiberias said abstractedly, staring at the paper. He looked up at the Princess with inscrutable eyes. 'You may think so, lady, but I do not. What would you have this… _conspiracy_ do?'

'Poison, perhaps – I… do not know…' Sybilla looked shaken. 'I was afeared, and… confused.'

'Sybilla – Madam…' Tiberias spoke with the gentle voice of a man soothing a high-spirited horse. 'Your fears confound you. Do you not remember? If you accuse Abu Suleyman Dawud of _poison_, then you err indeed. He is a loyal servant to the King, as he was to your father, God rest him. Faith, you are no frantic vassal to cry all Moors are poisoners!'

Hope flared in Sybilla's eyes. 'You think it nothing?'

Tiberias glanced down again, his heart sinking like a stone._ Written in love and fealty._ Not this, at such a time…By your own Physician. _Your own_, no less. But he'd be accursed indeed if he betrayed _this_ to Sybilla. This struck a warning chord in Tiberias far beyond explaining the whole.

'I did not say that.' He said gravely, keeping his face stern. 'You were right, this matter must be… searched, rooted out.' Pray God I am wrong.

Sybilla looked a little alarmed; a slight flush of guilt crossed her face. 'What do you intend if Mirrum proves guilty –'

'That is my affair. Not yours.' Tiberias said shortly. 'Pray the saints intercede on her behalf , for treachery. If this _is_ treachery.'

God's truth, I know it isn't. But is it _worse_?

Sybilla withdrew a few paces. 'What would you have me do?'

Tiberias dragged his thoughts back to the present, unwillingly. 'Send her,' he said heavily. 'I've questioned 'em in the past, conspirators. I'd soon know it in a maid.'

'If she proves innocent-'

'Then there is nothing to fear for her!' Tiberias' voice was sharper than he intended. 'Say no word of this to her. Leave it to me.'

He had dropped his head in his hands with a bleak and soul-weary look as Sybilla left the apartment with a soft step. It was that which gave Sybilla the uneasy impression these were very deep, very troubled waters. But now she stood and watched her maid, and it became uncertain again…

Poor whey-faced fool.

'Lord Tiberias wishes to speak with you.'

Mirrum looked up from the floor. Her hands were filled with odd bits of twig and fallen leaf with which the young Prince was eagerly building a bulwark against the armies of Xerxes.

'He does, my lady?' she said easily, smiling. 'Is it that late?'

Sybilla's hand twitched convulsively against her gown, the hennaed patterns seemingly dancing with her fingers. 'No. It is not,' she said quietly, looking away. She could not quite bear to see Mirrum look at her with such obvious ignorance of the storm ahead. 'I think it may be a little… early, lord Raymond has much business to attend to –'

'Oh! I see…' Mirrum brushed a little dirt from her sleeve and scampered to her feet in the peculiar gangling, half-grown way that she had. 'I'll wait on him if he desires it, my lady. Thank you…'

'You would not hurry to thank me if you knew,' Sybilla murmured after her. ' 'Ware nobles…_Dane_-girl.'

Mirrum brushed at the door quite easily, with outstretched fingertips, and even once she had entered, made her usual obeisance (which came with a little more practice than at first), noticed nothing unusual. Even though Tiberias remained immobile behind the wooden defences of the table, and that the usual game was not marked out in readiness, as it always was.

Mirrum looked up, puzzled that he did not speak. Tiberias seemed to have barely noticed her; his gaze was fixed almost entirely by a scrap of paper on his desk…

The silence prickled with awkward discomfort. Mirrum had almost (but not quite) made up her mind to slip quietly out of the door before he saw her when Tiberias spoke. Sharply.

'How _do_ you find Catullus, then?'

Mirrum's blood stopped. 'My lord?'

'Catullus.'

Mirrum ventured, heart pounding, to look down at the desk.

Lords of _Hell_.

The _Carmine_ was lying accusingly across the surface of the wood, the sliver of the fifty-first sonnet staring up at her like a reproachful eye. It was the one she had been translating before the ride with Sybilla –

The words seemed to burn themselves into the back of Mirrum's dulled eyes.

'…_snatches away all of the senses from poor me.'_

Tiberias' glance was stony. 'I would be interested,' he said coldly, 'to hear what explanation you can offer for _this_.'

'It…it was a gift…' Mirrum's tongue felt huge and heavy in her mouth, the clammy, stifling air lying like a hot hand over her face.

'That much I see. Indeed. God pardon me for the lie I told your mistress just now, but –' Tiberias sighed, and removed the hand he had been holding to his brow. 'God's blood, how could you be such a moon-cuckold, child?!'

'I am _not_ a moon-cuckold.' Mirrum hardly knew where the words came from, but they came from some white-hot, ragingly angry corner of her soul, and it seemed to leap furiously from her tongue, the very syllables frost-rimed. 'And the Catullus isn't _yours_! It was lent –'

'Do you know from _where_?'

Mirrum remained mutinously silent.

'Obstinacy will do you no good if Sybilla has her way, and insists the ah – the…

_Physician, _is it?' Tiberias laid a hoarsely ironic emphasis on the name. 'That your Physician is some emissary of Salahuddin. You would be buried alive in the outcry, if not the punishment. Which would fall on _you_. Do you know what the penalty for stealing is? Especially for stealing from a _king _–'

There was no icy frost on Mirrum's words now. She had sunk down into herself, trembling with nervous anger and fear, her shoulders taut at the beginning of Tiberias' abrupt interrogation. But she looked up fast now, her paper-pale cheeks suddenly fiery, the hitherto glassy grey eyes blazing wildly inside her head.

'You accuse _him_ of stealing?' she said, with a sudden violence that took even the cynicism of the Lord Marshal a little aback. 'The _**Physician**_? What manner of man are you? To think that?! I thought you a good man, lord Tiberias, not a petty dismisser of - of little people! That is a cruel and a wicked thing you do to accuse _him_!'

Tiberias marvelled at the mercurial spread of rage through the pale maid – it was like watching Greek fire. But at the same time he looked at the feverish flush of Mirrum's face and knew what ailed her.

'Who is he, then?' Tiberias spoke softly, so as to have time to examine Mirrum's rage. Yes, the convulsive hands, opening and shutting, nails digging sharp little half-crescents into the palms – the quivering, almost helpless fit of temper. It was something only green youth could produce in a soul. Rages like that did not consume a man with experience of the world. It was a rage against the injustices Tiberias had long since grown weary of living with. '

This… Physician? Perhaps I know more of him than you…'

'It is clear you _don't_!' Mirrum flashed back, witheringly. 'Otherwise you would not have spoken of him so!' Some drunken, largely ignored voice within her was screaming at her not to speak so rashly, to exercise control, caution, to stop – but Mirrum was beyond the voice of reason now. She spoke wildly. 'More shame for the whole court he is walled up like some heretic priest above! And you accuse him of theft and treachery –

'Child-'

'Disloyalty to the King is as impossible as it is to himself! He swore! You think because we are obscure and little and… and _silent_ we are jointed wooden dolls?' Mirrum was close to tears. 'I thought you were different from Sybilla, my lord, but you credit me with no more sense than a stone! A useful stone, mind you,' she added bitterly. 'But still just a stone.'

Tiberias was silent.

Mirrum, breathing hard, expected any minute for him to make a sharp, sudden movement, a call that would summon guards. It wouldn't surprise her. After the rage had come a sort of numbed resignation to the inevitable trouble that would follow.

But he did not call. Looking up from beneath her tousled fringe, Mirrum could see the tired lines in the Lord Marshal's face, a small crease between the dark tufted eyebrows. Yes, even the eyebrows were a little daubed with grey, like the grizzled close-cropped hair. He looked old. Tired. And looking not a little pained at being here, in this stifling room, in such an odd predicament. He stared at her for a long time.

Eventually, wiping the trickle of damp from his forehead, Tiberias looked at her long and earnestly, a wry ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

'As impossible to himself, eh?' he murmured under his breath, before looking up at Mirrum. This time there was no sharpness in it, no interrogative needling. He merely looked like a tired, weary man – not the harsh-voiced symbol of authority he became under necessity.

'You are much mistaken,' he said quietly – and very kindly, as if to a tired and petulant child. 'In many things, poor child, but especially in that I think you a stone. If I thought you a dullard servant without wit or feeling there would be no questioning, and you would taste of Jerusalem's indifferent justice – never a kindly thing for a maid. And you forget, in some ways, how much of a game-piece I am myself. We are all a game of chess –or hnefatatl,' he added. This quiet reminder of the old camaraderie broke the ill temper that soured the air like glass; Mirrum trembled and averted her gaze. She felt guilty beyond words.

'… if anything, perhaps Sybilla might accuse me of crediting you with a little too much feeling.' Tiberias' words seem to come from an immeasurable distance. 'In that I shall now address you as a friend, not an interrogator. I do not desire to trap you. I sincerely want to know. What is your Physician? What does he look like?' And his eyes were so unreproachful, having simply past over Mirrum's rash words, that the last barrier in the serving-girl broke down, and all emerged in a flood of tear-stained words. The first meeting, the trespass into the closed garden – the voice, the friendship, the game of guessing – no, he perhaps wasn't a physician, but he had said it was as close a name as any – he was the best, the most kindly soul she had ever met, and what did not knowing his name or face signify? He was a friend…

It seemed as though, once the dam was broken, that Mirrum spilled every secret from the moment the Physician's voice first remarked on her wet feet. The truth was it was something of a relief to speak of it; the weight of the secret had hung heavy within Mirrum like overripe fruit waiting to be swept away by a gust of wind. And Mirrum had long been a prey to her emotions in silence. It was inexpressibly good to let it fall away whilst the Lord Marshal – incongruous confessor! Sat silent and unreadable in his carven chair, ungrudging, impartial –

And all the while Tiberias wished the world had ended rather than be forced to bear witness to _this_. He had known very well whose handwriting had penned the "Physician's" note – thankfully hidden under a sheaf of papers. Mirrum must never know of _that _– especially when she was so clearly drawn in too deeply. It was in her eyes as she spoke of her invisible friend – a certain softness when she spoke of him, mingled with a tender reverence only usually found in the ardent believer. As she finished, she even looked at Tiberias with a wild hope in her eyes, silently asking, begging for assurance – perhaps even a thought that Tiberias might know her Physician…

This was too cruel. He turned away so as not to see her expression, shading his eyes with one hand as he stared fixedly at the first of the evening lights being brought in. The rushlights seem to pass like a chain of white pinpricks about the cloisters. God, for some inspiration! Something that wasn't the truth, for the truth was too painful – He hadn't even the courage to tell it to Sybilla – Sybilla, who wouldn't understand.

Mirrum – who would understand, but….under the weight of that truth? And Tiberias took pity on the mistaken, shivering love in her eyes, feeling a sad echo of fellow feeling with her. He had known that sort of awkward calf-love in his youth – almost an age ago, but still within memory. He knew the inevitable end of it all, even without the …Christ's tears, the complication of the "Physician."

What to say? How to say it?

'That is enough,' he said abruptly. 'No more of this, heh? No more weeping. I don't suspect your…' Heaven help us! '_Physician_ of any wrongdoing. I believe I know the man, from what you say of him, and you are right – you were quite right to defend him. Treachery towards the King is _quite_ impossible for _him._'

If there was a note of bitterness in his voice, Mirrum certainly did not notice it. She sprang forward, gratitude shining in her red eyes, and even went so far as to impulsively press the gruff Lord Marshal's hand. Tiberias stared at it blankly, as though he had hardly been aware he possessed a hand before now.

'What… what is he like?' she asked timidly. 'I – forgive me for speaking so out of turn, I –'

'I would have done much the same,' Tiberias said hastily. 'Don't think of it.'

'And you know him! You have talked to him, face to face?' Mirrum's own face seemed lit with a gentle inner glow. 'You must tell me of him!'

'Not tonight!' Tiberias spoke loudly, scraping back his chair. Mirrum withdrew, meekly, chastened by his tone. 'I mean – perhaps tomorrow. I have little time and much concerns me… tonight. We must leave our game for another time.'

Mirrum turned to go –

'Wait! Girl! Do you – do you go to meet your Physician? Tonight?'

'I speak with him every night, my lord,' Mirrum said it shyly, flushing a little. 'I – I think I tire him – sometimes. But he dislikes it if I speak of it. I think he often forces himself on merely to prove the weariness is not there. So I do not mention it, for his sake.'

'Let it alone, then.' Tiberias said quietly. 'For tonight. I will have to speak to your _Physician_ tonight.'

'My lord,' Mirrum dipped a hurried curtsey, her eyes wide with apprehension. But she made no protest.

'Girl!'

Tiberias beckoned her back once more. 'Here.' He said, holding out the much-abused roll of the _Carmine_. 'Take your poetry.'

Perhaps it was just chance that their fingers brushed accidentally against each other as the scroll passed between them. But it certainly was not chance that Tiberias waited, carefully, until Mirrum's footsteps were out of earshot before glaring at the Physician letter as though he owed it a mortal grudge, and then thrust it into the brazier at his elbow. It smouldered, caught, and burned, the last of the words blackening into smoke.

_Written in love and fealty by your own Physician…_

Mirrum was perhaps not the only soul who had fallen into error in the court of Jerusalem.


	19. Chapter 19

Tiberias was no fool. He could move as silently as a wraith when occasion called for it, and he'd have wagered his lands away before he thought Mirrum would so tamely give up her 'Physician'. It wasn't in her nature. Tiberias, it has to be said, would have been rather disappointed in her if she had obeyed him.

Ah…_Yes_.

Mirrum had approached the cloister, with its forked twist. Turn left, pass into the environs of the Princess' quarters, and she would be back in her cell of a room with only her thoughts for company. Turn right, pass around the fretworked walls of the garden to the shadowed place where Mirrum habitually climbed in and out, and she would be with the friend for whom she had risked so much…

Tiberias watched as she stopped on the brink, quietly sliding into a patch of shadow on the wall. He merely became a darker lining to the shade, that was all…

Mirrum twitched as though stung as she slowly, painfully turned her face left, as though she were plucking against some invisible thread that balked her movements. But in another moment she had jerked her head sharply around to face right with a slight cry.

She could not do it.

Mirrum was angry with herself for even _contemplating_ leaving the Physician to face the accusing stare of the Lord Marshal unprepared. Not that she begrudged Tiberias; in a sense she was grateful to him for sparing her feelings so much, allowing her time to help his understanding of the case. But from that blank face? After she had confessed all? He had understood _nothing_. It was nothing to him but some minor sin, a slight indiscretion on the part of a mudlark…Mirrum was too flushed with sorrow and indignant rage to pay heed to the nuances of the case. She was _angry_.

'God's _blood_,' she muttered under her breath, remembering that favourite oath of the lord of Tripoli.

She was too agitated to be discreet tonight. She couldn't wait to find the shadowy patch. Mirrum threw off her clumsy cloth slippers and tossed them over the wall, hurling them viciously at the walled garden that was no longer secret, no longer safe...

This might be the last time she ever spoke with him again.

The very thought of _that _made Mirrum practically throw herself at the wall, desperately scrambling, stumbling, painfully scratching one bare foot against the carved edge of a shaped whorl, her fingers sore –

Hah! But she gained the top of the wall, which had seemed an impassable Jacob's ladder tonight. She didn't bother to climb down, either. She simply let go as though she had sprouted wings, and might fly down…

Ugh.

It was a poor landing. Mirrum landed heavily, all the breath knocked out of her as she lay coughing wretchedly in the dust, looking about her. It wasn't the enchanted haven it had once been, even now. There was an air of disillusionment, of sad trickery about it, as though it were part and parcel of come cheap strolling conjuror's tricks, and he had long since gone to try his luck elsewhere. Not this scrubby, neglected patch of wilderness, the bushes straggling, uncared for, sickly weeds drooping on the lip of the pavement like swooning ladies. The fountain a mere sullen murmur of water, cracked, dried mud marking the dribble of wet in the bottom of the bowl.

It was a _dying_ garden.

Mirrum closed her eyes, feeling the rough powdery grit of the earth sharp against her cheek, and wished herself somewhere else. She didn't want to see it like this for the last time. But she haltingly, stumblingly, groped her way up from the earth and stood with fingers clawing at the intricate lacework of the garden wall, looking upward. She had to. She couldn't simply give up.

All was dark there, none of the familiar warm orange light that backlit the Physician.

He wasn't there.

'No!' Mirrum desperately ran forward. 'Physician?! For God's sake hear me! _Please!_'

Perhaps she was too late. Perhaps he was already being questioned. Perhaps he was…

'Dane-lady?'

The voice was very faint – but Mirrum heard the soft, halting tread of footsteps above, accompanied by a faint speck of light – a single taper, not the usual dusky glow of the brazier. He sounded faintly drowsy. Mirrum was right, she had come later than her usual hour.

"I was on the verge of sleep, Dane-lady. I thought you inclined not to come…' his voice trailed away. The indistinct white–clad figure leant a little over the parapet with sudden concern. 'Are you well?'

'Oh, P-Physician…' To Mirrum's self-disgust, her eyes blurred, producing two, three Physicians spinning confusedly in a thousand walled gardens. 'I-I'm sorry, I…'

'You are distressed!' The Physician sounded appalled, 'Lady…please, I hope this is not on my account. If you have heard… it is _nothing_…'

'Heard you called thief and traitor? It is _not_ nothing!' Mirrum protested, her hands curling and uncurling on the bricks of the mortared wall as though she was trying to tear down the palace, stone by stone. Odd coincidence – but above, separated only by a few feet of height, other hands were clenching – painfully – on the stone balustrade. But at this they uncurled a little.

'And who said this?'

'Everyone! Tiberias and Sybilla think the worst of m-me and… oh, Physician, they made me feel such a mean little goose…' Mirrum glowered. 'I'm not! And I defy them to say anything of _you_ that is bad…'

It took much patient sifting from the man above to make much sense of the girl below, but Mirrum unhesitatingly revealed the painful interview with Tiberias, sadly holding aloft the roll of Judas-poetry that betrayed her.

'Tiberias said it was stealing…' Mirrum finished, shakily. 'From the K-king…'

The dim taper above guttered out, abruptly, as a cold shaft of wind blew its way into the courtyard. They were both waiting in darkness.

The Physician made a slight shift in the darkness. 'I should fetch another…' he said, truly to himself. But he made no move for it, and Mirrum said nothing in agreement bar a hollow 'Yes,' and no more.

'It _wasn't_.'

'W-wasn't what, Physician?' Mirrum shivered. 'It doesn't matter. You did it to help me. You weren't spying, or false.'

'It _wasn't_ stealing.' The Physician said clearly, and deliberately. 'That is a lie. The King gave it freely, and truly, and of his own will, and if it is wrong to help you – God pardon me for the liberty! Then I would venture much more for your sake, and go so far as to say that you have helped me in turn, and – we have both eased each other's loneliness, have we not, madam Dane-Lady? And even if it was only an act of kindness for a poor wretched soul as bored and as alone as I am – I do not regret it. And- Dane-Lady, do you understand?'

Mirrum did understand. So much so that she stood on tiptoe, suddenly thrusting her hands through an overgrown jessamine bush near the fountain. It was almost a tree – ragged, overgrown, with shaggy locks of dark-green glossy leaves that shed themselves underfoot. It was sturdy; it would bear her weight if she were careful. Mirrum set a foot in it, hoisted herself aloft.

'I understand,' she said, her voice trembling. There was something like a star approached to the carved pillars of her balustrade; that, or, perhaps, the shine of an eye. Mirrum could see nothing more in the darkness. It was pitch black, her eyes barely growing used to the gloom. 'But I think… oh Physician, I fear – I don't think I will be let to see you again… Tiberias forbade me seeing you tonight – he meant to speak with you...' Mirrum's voice broke a little on the words, and the thought. To never see – no, correction, to never _hear_ the Physician again was more than she could bear in this world.

'I felt that coming, Dane Lady,' the Physician said sorrowfully. 'I guessed it when you told me. But it would have come in time anyway. The King grows more sickly –'

'No!'

'-And will die,' the Physician finished gently. 'And when he dies, I go too, Dane Lady… Mirrum. That is the way of things.'

'But…' It was the first time he had ever called her Mirrum by itself.

'I knew you, Mirrum. It was why I did not tell you. It was why I did not tell you many things, but this comes crashing upon us, and we must part, it seems…' Was his voice a little unsteady too?

Mirrum climbed, high as the slender branches dared her to climb, in the painful wonder of it all. 'I did hope to have you with me until - the end…'

'I_ wanted _to stay until the end,' Mirrum sobbed, resting her hot forehead against the cold stone and smearing grit across her brow, very much like an unconscious donning of sackcloth and ashes. She could have reached up and touched the very balustrade where the dark shape of the Physician crouched. It would have been so easy…

But Mirrum didn't. What was the point? It wouldn't make the separation any easier, the loss a lighter load to bear. The very thought of it hovered between them like a reproachful ghost, admitting nothing but recalling, sharply, every little kindness that had passed between them in the course of their friendship.

The words had dried up, like a parched riverbed. Mirrum's feelings, finding no words, had given way to tears. It might not have been just the Physician she was weeping for; there was that dead-yet-not-dead father, walled up in a monastery through his own will, and never mourned for – yet still just as achingly absent as if he had been buried alive. But it was another unnatural parting, and she had buried her head into the carved stone as though it were a cold shoulder to weep upon…

She was closer too to the Physician than she had ever been before. His eyesight was poor; it often failed him at gazing long distances. Mirrum had been little more than a pale blur clouded by an indistinct haze – almost as remote to _him_ as he had been to _her_. From his hidden place out of sight in the dark, behind the wall, he could see her quite clearly. Granted, Mirrum was no beauty. She didn't know the art of it, as Sybilla did – she didn't darken her eyelids with kohl, or redden her lips with brazil-wood cream. But grieving in the dark, she seemed softened, as if made of candle-wax rather than flesh and bone. All soft edges, even to her hair – like the windswept halo of the moon…

Mirrum looked heavenwards, turning her face up towards the shine of the eye. Both of them looked, fixedly, without really seeing; Mirrum blinded by tears, and her own perceptions, the Physician struck with how little the distance between them was.

Neither of them spoke a word, until the Physician broke the silence.

'You have thirteen freckles on your nose.' he remarked, distractedly. Odd, that remark! Was it truly from her wise Physician? Had Mirrum not known better, and believed so implicitly in the placating lie the Physician had so carefully cultivated, she might have thought her Physician sounded oddly plaintive, and sadly youthful. But she briefly smiled upwards, before turning her face down again –

To her surprise, a few moments later she felt something – a leaf, maybe, brush through her hair. It felt a little like a moth on second thoughts, and she reached up to brush it out…

Only to find it was a handful of gloved fingers.

They were heavily swaddled – and curiously _motionless_, when she touched them – like clasping a scarecrow's empty stick-filled glove rather than a human hand. Were it not for the fact it was clearly made of flesh-and-blood, dimly felt through the linen…

Mirrum looked up to meet the shine of the eyes looking at her, only to find they had withdrawn deeper into shadow, and that the hand had twitched, anxiously, within her own like a fish snagged on a line.

'The _infection_…' the Physician said – immensely slowly, as if the words were dragged from him by force. 'I…Dane-Lady…'

Mirrum didn't answer, merely pressed the fingers within her own. They stiffly, clumsily, squeezed back. Mirrum hadn't seen that the Physician's eyes had once more tentatively gazed through the small aperture of the pillared balustrade. He had to do it by eye alone, not by feeling.

In some small way it made it worse. Mirrum, with the sort of gravity with which she imagined in the fictitious ladies of court (not the real ones), had quietly lifted it to her cheek, staring bleakly through the jessamine leaves to the ground below. It was a solitary spectatorship. As if none of it was quite real at all.

Mirrum eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, forced herself to make the farewell. Although not without quickly, and shyly, inclining a little of her lips to the linen-clad palm – in a motion the Physician did not feel – and then gently releasing it.

Alas, even in poignancy Mirrum was not poetic. Forgetting her footing, she crashed through several branches of the jessamine bush, snapping off branches leaves and covering herself in pieces of twig and crushed fragments of blossom – before recovering herself dizzily, and staggering towards her abandoned shoes. She did not dare look up.

In fact she made a frantic run for the wall, scrambling over as if the hounds of hell were snapping at her heels. But if she didn't leave _quickly_ – she never would.

Tiberias watched her disconsolately lope back towards her quarters before emerging from his hiding place – and, with a brief curse at the ill wrench his leg gave him, taking a leap over the wall himself. It had been the late King Almaric's private garden, last Tiberias had looked at it. It had, of course, passed to his son, along with the title of King. But it had been shut up since – since the present…

'Majesty,' he said quietly. 'It had to be done. It was better – this way, that I take it upon my own head to be the villain of the piece.'

The 'Physician' rose, righted himself, and stood upright, a gauzy, haughty figure in the dark. A king looked back, not an apothecary, at the Lord Marshal.

'You did what you thought _must_ be done.' He said quietly. Not, however, without a slight quiver of ice in his clipped inflection. A king is also a man, and men may be subject to anger, however unreasonable or injudicious.

'God's bones! That was a pretty mummery on your part,' Tiberias said bitterly. 'I never yet knew you guilty of an unknightly act, Majesty, but that deception was… _cruel. _Did you never think of the inevitable _end_? When she comes to meet her Physician and finds him vanished into thin air? And then it would all come out – the wanton humour of an idle king –'

'Is that what you believe?' It was too great a distance in the croaking dark of the garden, with the lirruping of the evening insects, for Tiberias to see the eyes behind the perfect neutrality of the effigy-like mask. But the reasonable tone seemed to be glazed with frost. Fortunately Tiberias was stolidly immune.

'I know you better, I think,' he said wearily. 'Majesty. And I think I understand all too well how it came to pass, but – any happiness, any self-respect gained in her…_attachment_ to you would not last – once she learnt the truth.'

'You saw.' The King said flatly. It was a barbed accusation.

'Because you have my love and fealty, highness, and I wish both you – and her – no harm. And because it will hardly matter any longer.' Tiberias leant against a pillar, arms folded like a knight upon a tomb. He hated the compassion he felt, but it had to be conquered for _this _purpose. 'Sybilla,' he said aloud, 'has a fancy to journey 'to Cana.' She will take the maid with her.'

'To Cana' was a polite metaphor, to the cynical Tiberias, for 'about her own pleasure,' but he used it as a quiet statement. A placating gesture, and a quiet way of turning the conversation. 'I suspect young Balian of Ibelin may have something to do with it, but – God pardon sin! I doubt he leads her on. Too thoughtful a young man for that.'

Tiberias' closing of the afternoon had had much to do with Balian of Ibelin. So had his liege lord, who had been pleasantly surprised by his quality.

'And that is the end of it, Lord Marshal? You remove the Physician so easily, with a handful of words?' A less discerning man than the Lord of Tripoli would not have noticed the bitterness of the King, Nor the faint pleading edge to his voice.

'There must be no more Physicians, majesty.' Tiberias said firmly. 'The apothecary is dead. I shall not humour the convenient lie any further.'

And that did indeed end the matter. Perhaps because the Physician knew, deep in the hidden, hated king of his, that Tiberias was right. And it must, at last, come to its inevitable end. The Physician withered and died right there, amongst the crushed leaves of jessamine.


	20. Chapter 20

It would not be pleasant to describe in detail the dullard, grey nature of the world for Mirrum after the closing interview with the Physician.

Sybilla had a bad conscience about the whole affair after Mirrum did not return from Tiberias, and restlessly paced the length of her apartments, sniping irritably at Ammet, seeking quarrels Ammet did not start, and generally out of temper with the world for giving her a sense of guilt she did not like. It was made worse by the ill mood of Guy at table – again, but not something she did not expect, and the humiliation of their union exposed in front of the gentle liquid eyes of Balian of Ibelin. No matter how lightly and genially she jousted verbally afterwards with him, she sensed his pity, and was hardly sure if she liked it or no. When she finally, at a very late hour, heard a dispirited shuffle that marked Mirrum's return, she positively flew to the door in a fever of anxiety. Sybilla was not a bad woman. And in some respects she was something of a child. Her political sense was keen enough, true, but she had grown too fond of Mirrum to be the arch Sybilla, the Sybilla who dropped maids and followers like broken toys when she was done with them. To those whom she trusted, Sybilla held little back. And she had had enough time to be troubled with the thought that the harmless 'apothecary' and the clandestine meetings might have been _a little _like the ride to see Balian of Ibelin. Sybilla, blessedly, had not so much as gleaned a hint of the truth from Tiberias. Sybilla had enough sad baulking of chances – perhaps not more than that, but chances of love, a little safety – the qualities she imbibed France and Balian of Ibelin with in ample measure. She thought she had just destroyed a harmless love affair, and felt the pangs of guilt accordingly.

'_Petite revenante!' _Even the name rang a little hollow with Sybilla. It fell flat on the air of the passage like the ring of a shield on the ground. She dropped it, abashedly. 'Mirrum – you return – late…'

Sybilla looked tousled and restless, the delicate rings of kohl about her eyes a little smudged into the violet dark hollows of weariness. But it was nothing to how Mirrum looked. For once she truly earned the playful name of 'little ghost' that Sybilla had given her. Her face looked oddly papery, as though someone had crumpled it up like a sheaf of paper and the creases hadn't yet settled. There was a certain sickly greenish tinge to it, that told she had cried herself into choking and retching miserably somewhere amongst the echoing solitude of the deserted corridors. As, indeed, she had. The swollen puce colour of her eyelids told Sybilla the truth all too plainly, and with a pang of reproach, she noticed Mirrum was trailing in one hand the very scroll that had started it all.

Why was she holding the other hand to her face? Did she have the toothache?

'Mirrum?' Sybilla's voice grew sharper, as she received no reply but a glazed and stupefied look from her maid. Distressed or no, this lack of response irritated her. 'Have you an ague?'

Mirrum dazedly shook her head, her eyes fixed on the dusty stone floor. A beetle wandered past her foot. 'No, my lady,' she said, her voice low. 'I am quite well now.'

'You don't look it.' Sybilla stared at her. 'Why didn't you return at once?'

'I did not feel – I-' Mirrum looked up, two pebble grey eyes scrunched up in her spoon of a face. 'I was a little unwell before,' she said, in a voice made of stone. 'I am recovered from _my folly_ now, my lady.' And she curtseyed with a deliberately formal gesture that turned Sybilla's stomach into a knot of guilt. But she didn't show it. Her mind was restless with other things besides slight discomfort over the treatment of a waiting woman.

'You had better be well enough to travel,' she remarked, making a show of indifference. The mask of pretty, careless Sybilla had fallen down once again. 'We make pilgrimage to Cana within a month - I have a mind to begin my neglected orisons once more.' Sybilla smiled ironically, but one hand twitched restlessly amongst the locks of dark hair at her shoulders, betraying her suppressed excitement. 'Ask Ammet to make you a posset if you feel unwell. She knows what I mean. Ask her.'

Mirrum lowered her eyes again. 'Yes, milady.'

'And don't keep touching your face like that! You look as though you have toothache. _Have_ you toothache? Have you prayed to Saint Apollonia?'

Mirrum gently let her hand fall loosely into her lap. She had hardly realized she had done it – after the hiccupping tears were done with she had kept her hand on her cheek to (as if absurdly fancied) keep the Physician there. As if he were something she couldn't brush away. 'I have no toothache, my lady. I am sorry, my lady. I shall be myself tomorrow.'

As soon as Sybilla had closed her door to her the hand holding the _Carmine_ bunched into a tight fist, the other flying rebelliously to her cheek –

No. Too late. It was gone now. The slight, butterfly feeling that gloved fingers were still resting on er cheek had vanished in the draught from Sybilla's closed door, leaving Mirrum locked out on the outside.

Ammet must have known more of the whole affair than Mirrum had imagined. Upon Mirrum entering, dry-eyed but taut of face, she merely _looked_, with wary, pitying dark eyes, and then wordlessly handed Mirrum a stoop-cup of spiced lemon wine. Mirrum took it in hands shaking with anger and nerves.

'Does she mean to poison me now?' she said tonelessly.

'No.' Ammet said simply. 'She doesn't.'

Mirrum didn't realize how hard she had been holding back her fury, for she took one, tight-lipped sip from the cup and then dashed it against the wall. 'I _hate_ Jerusalem! I hate it all – all the… the…'

'Politics?' Ammet said wisely, settling herself easily against the hard plaster of the wall as though Mirrum had merely expressed an idle opinion. 'You didn't wager on that when you first came? Ah…'

'Not politics! Having to _lie_ all the time! To have to smile and pretend to Sybilla that she has done _nothing!' _Mirrum stared at the yellow sunburst that the spilt wine had made on the wall, dribbles spreading into the rushes. 'I want to rage and scream and _howl_, Ammet! Even _Dame Juliana_ wasn't as bad as this…'

'Because she thought you worthless.' Ammet said boredly, tracing a circle with her fingernail on her pallet. 'Because she wouldn't have cared about a maid, and there would have been no treachery she could possibly have noticed. From what you say of your fat Saxon mistress. Sybilla is different, yes. And she interfered, which you will think unforgivable…'

'I do!'

'For a while. Sybilla feels ill over it. She thought you a spy.' Ammet smiled, mirthlessly. '_Listen_, pale mooncalf. You are getting wise – some ways – but in others you are as stupid as a child. Your life doesn't _belong_ to you. It belongs to Sybilla, for now. And she's the best of the court. Be grateful she didn't simply kick you out to beg at the David Gate. Life is not easy. They have been kinder than you deserve.' Ammet paused, cocked her pretty head on one side. 'I know how you feel. Better than most. You want to rage at the way your destiny is decided like a bale of cloth or a handful of chickens, yes? That you are something to be moved around and traded and removed if you are a burden, or cause trouble…But Sybilla _cares_ for you. Which means she doesn't do it lightly. She cares for me too – although she doesn't trust me.'

Mirrum blinked. 'She doesn't? You're her most loyal waiting-maid –'

'I am –' Ammet mused, almost to herself. 'But – I have other loyalties.' Her sloe-black eyes looked at Mirrum, all amusement gone. 'Not to the Franks. I am like you, pale girl. Caught between two worlds. Only mine isn't your wet English field and your mud. My family is… powerful, on the other side. Salahuddin favours them, and they have proved their loyalty – _to him_.'

Mirrum , with a shiver, realized what Ammet had just told her, without saying it in so many words. Yes, Ammet was like her. Like Mirrum, she was a spy. But not for Sybilla or any in the Court of Jerusalem.

'Why are you telling me this?'

'Because you are miserable.' Ammet said bluntly. 'Because you feel ill-used and resentful at the world and you have no-one else to tell it to – _any more_. And because, oddly enough for a Frank – I believe you would not say it.' She stood up, briskly, brushing straw from her skirt. 'It will not matter for much longer, any way. Sybilla journeys to Cana, did you hear? Soon.' There was a bubble of mischievous laughter lurking behind her mouth. 'Do not be very surprised if the 'road to Cana' takes us to Ibelin.'

After a while, Mirrum began to fervently wish the pilgrimage 'to Cana' would come more quickly. The few weeks left behind in Jerusalem were torturous without the Physician. It was made worse by the fact that Mirrum knew she could still speak with him – jump the wall, be reckless, give no thought to what would inevitably lie ahead if she broke troth with the Lord Marshal. In the daylight she avoided the cloister and its neglected garden altogether, never venturing near it at night…

Or, she would have done were it not for the habitual appointed meetings with the Lord Marshal. Mirrum had rather thought Tiberias would drop her like a tainted sweetmeat after …everything, but despite it all, the dogged perseverance with which they wearily played out the same old battles of chess and hnefatatl went on. And on.

And Tiberias was true to his word. He did tell her of the Physician. And asked her about him, too, on occasion. Never offering apology or explanation, but, bizarrely – he seemed to understand that Mirrum needed to keep the pent up dam of words at a low ebb.

Oh yes, he did tell her of the Physician. But not in a way that she understood or comprehended until much, much later. It was only then that she appreciated the quiet kindness of it all.

'He taught you how to defeat me.'

Mirrum paused, fingers poised over a bishop. 'Yes,' she said, simply. 'He did.' The worst of it – the first few weeks, were done with. It had eased into a quiet dull ache somewhere in Mirrum's ribcage. She found she could smile a little, remembering, although it was a sickly wan smile, obviously forced.

'An astute man.' Tiberias stared down at the board. 'You know, I have often played this game with the King himself?' he said abruptly, drumming his fingers on the table. Mirrum stared at him, wondering at this new turn in the conversation. Tiberias looked uneasy; he coughed, looked down at the black and white squares again. There was a crease between the two greying eyebrows again, as though he were thinking of more than his next move. She stared at the little carved face of the bishop, waiting for more to follow.

'Yes – yes indeed. He is a keen opponent.' Tiberias continued, in the same strained voice. 'He often defeats me that way.'

Mirrum looked back, two button-black pupils shrinking to pinpricks in the candlelight. 'Does he, my lord?' she said politely. 'He must be a great player.'

Tiberias sat back, still drumming his fingers on the table in that skittish, indecisive way of his – until he caught the movement, and boldly flicked the ivory bishop with a contemptuous movement of finger and thumb.

'What did the Physician think of the Patriarch, lady?'

Mirrum gave her tight smile in return. 'He didn't think of him,' she said, suddenly. 'Really. But when he did he thought him a…'

'-Hypocrite.' It was as though she was still standing by the choked fountain again, listening. It was the only time there had ever been a jeering, faintly cold note to the Physician's voice, and at the time she have both laughed and shivered in the same instant – enjoying the half-heresy of hearing the bishop pulled down from his pedestal, and at the same time a little afraid of the Physician's mood. 'A stuffed ape shrieking hellfire at the rest of the world, whilst greedily dabbling his fingers in every mortal sin the length of Christendom, and a vicious worshipper of Mammon…'

'I hardly know him, Physician – perhaps he is not as bad as they say…' To Mirrum the Lord Patriarch had been a small, doll-sized figure at Mass, tiny in front of the massed crowds who gathered to hear God's representative in Jerusalem, the Holy City…

It was like seeing the Pope pelted with stones, hearing him.

'_I_ do.' The Physician had returned, forbiddingly. 'And he is ten times worse than the rest of the world believes. Keep him at a distance, Dane-Lady. For peril of your soul.'

'Interesting.' Tiberias said, leaning forward, an odd look crowding his features. 'And honest. I never heard his true opinion of the good Patriarch before – and I quite agree with him. Our lord Bishop is a puppet filled with gluttony. Have I ever told you the tale of when the Patriarch first came to power? He was a young man, then – younger, at any rate. Powerful cleric filled with the madness of old Peter the Hermit – all the old powerful stuff about butchering Saracens to make a path towards heaven. Dangerous. And involved with the Queen – so it was whispered. It was at the time of the –' Tiberias lowered his voice. 'The time the King was but a prince, but – it was just found out, then. The leprosy. He hardly understood himself, he was but the princeling's age…' Tiberias grunted. 'Looked much like him, too.'

Mirrum had a sudden picture of Prince 'Perseus' scampering about, all inquisitive eyes and gangling limbs with the coltish gambols of childhood. 'He did?' she said, in tones of genuine surprise.

'Ay. Sybilla named her son for her brother,' Tiberias said, narrowly watching Mirrum's face. She was no longer politely listening with mild awe to his tales of 'the King' – she was listening as one might to a storyteller. 'Anyhow, there was a whisper about the court, and these were times of peace. The Patriarch sees a perfect opportunity to prick King Amalric's conscience – remind him how futile a ruler he is, that he hasn't steeped the land in butchery. So, he makes the subject of his sermon that of Naaman the leper, and he spares _nothin_g. He has a poisonous way with words, the Patriarch. He rages about the womanish peace the King has imposed, and as punishment for his failure to punish the 'enemies of God' he makes veiled allusions to the very land being struck down with contagion, that not even the royal household is free from the cowardly taint of fear to do what is necessary. And he spares no details, with an eye to wounding the King deeply. He describes the full horror of the disease – _with his son present_. No-one had told the boy anything, then – poor innocent, he knew nothing of it .Then he understood. A child, to have that forced on him!' Tiberias shook his head, lost in the memory. 'I was there. And I tell you, if Amalric had echoed you King Henry and ordered me to cut down the Patriarch midway through his sermon, I would have done it with gladness within my heart. That man deserved the wolves that day.'

Mirrum imagined the Patriarch thundering down his fanaticism on the head of a very small Baldwin ( very much Prince 'Perseus', with the bewildered tearful look he had when he thought his mother would beat him), and she forgot the Physician for a moment in the injustice of it all. ' I would have struck him down too. That was devil's work!'

'It was,' Tiberias said. 'It _was_ devil's work. But Almaric was a man made of better stuff than I; that, or he felt his own sins had brought it upon his son. The sins of the fathers, and all that.' Tiberias stared into the past with a haunted look. 'One of the reason I never considered children my…self…' He trailed off, aware of his audience, and vaguely conscious he had not entirely meant to say that at all. But it had brought it back forcibly, with all the tricks of memory: a small, ashen face, large eyes staring, flickering anxiously from father to priest…

Almaric could not meet his son's gaze that day. That was probably how he had learned the truth.

'What did he do?' Mirrum's curious, indignant face brought him back to realities; Tiberias blinked.

'Who?'

' The King – I mean, the child. What did he do?'

'What? Oh… nothing. What could he do, after all? Went very quiet and very pale, that was all. Sat like a stone through the rest of the Mass.' Tiberias had been a young, earnest member of the court then, fresh to petty politics. Little details struck him painfully; not least the way the child had gently brushed his silent father's sleeve, as if to console him…

It had begun the foundation of a respect that had not dwindled with age. But it was a comfortless time for Tiberias, in that he had been forced to play a role he did not like in the middle of it all. He too, looked forward to the time when Mirrum would accompany Sybilla out of sight of the court to 'Cana'…


	21. Chapter 21

Mirrum half-felt a queasy longing, that clenched her stomach and numbed her mind when she thought of it too much, to run away. Not to anywhere – there was no destination in mind apart from 'away'. Away from all the difficulties, the things that weren't said. Away from Tiberias, whom she would miss – and yet she unreasonably resented him for the interference, the firm hints that she would return cured from Cana – or Ibelin – from all memory of the Physician. As though a few mindless weeks of trudge on the roads and drowsy devotions had the same power as a blow to the head. To run away from the pity, the knowing looks, the uncertain sideways glances. From Sybilla's studied ignorance. From Ammet too – although Mirrum did not quite know whether she minded Ammet knowing or not. Ammet had trusted her back. That was almost a friendship. But the most urgent reason Mirrum could think of to run away – the thing she hated most – was almost certainly herself.

Because she wanted everything to be as it was, the old days of the walled garden, a private secret, and more than most of her common sense screamed that could not be. Because reason and God-given wit told her that to do so now was folly, there were a thousand reasons why she could not go, that the farewell had been… final. The last goodbye had been the last. That one unreasonable, murderously angry part of herself - a savage part, perhaps something left over from a wild Danish ancestor screamed defiance at the world and all reason for preventing it.

For knowing her impulse to be wrong, and crushing it. Mirrum could curb mad thought, yes – but with a stern effort and a sullen will, and so she both loved and hated the prospect of pilgrimage with Sybilla. She felt like a lonely Lucifer cast out from a dim and serene Eden – to stay in the palace meant madness and she knew it if she had to hold herself back much longer. Cana, hateful thought it would be, meant escape. A brief respite from the… empty space where a friend had been.

Sometimes she talked to the Physician in the privacy of her own head. But she could never quite capture his answers as he would have spoken. It sounded false and sickly, the answers she concocted for him. Wrong. So, after a protracted struggle, Mirrum gave up the pretence and the wishing. There was no point to it anyway. It would hardly change anything.

And after all, there was a good deal to do to keep her occupied. A Royal Progress (for Sybilla, discreet though her retinue was, still had the pride of a princess) was no small matter.

Yet Ammet, as Sybilla's confidante and lady-in-waiting, was curiously… _slack_ in the preparations. Ammet, who had so often snapped sparks at lazy squires, now hung back, let Mirrum hesitantly prepare for the journey, merely following acquiescently in Mirrum's wake. As though she were… _testing_ her. Mirrum didn't know what to think anymore. Ammet was a mystery Mirrum could not hope to fathom without some sort of guide – and her motives were her own. But she suspected that in some way Ammet had relaxed her authority because, sooner or later, it wouldn't _matter_ any more…

* * *

'I think I shall rather regret your departure,' Tiberias said decidedly over his customary glass of spiced wine. He had eased on the drink of late; since Godfrey's death –

Odd, perhaps. A death normally edged Raymond of Tripoli closer to the gloomy philosophy found only at the bottom of a wine-glass, because the insubstantial comforts of religion did nothing to hide the gulf yawning in turn beneath Tiberias' feet. But no – of late the wine remained neglected. It was possible he felt too keen an anxiety over this business. Yes. That was it. The sooner the poor child was away from temptation the better.

But he would miss the games. Hnefetatl had acquired a sharper interest in the light of Mirrum's leaving.

'I cannot believe that Jerusalem is ever without duty for you, my lord.' Mirrum's pale cloud of hair hung like a mist before her face as she pondered her next move, chin in hands. She had lost the slight edge of veiled hostility she had borne for so many weeks after the forced separation from the Physician – if anything, it was possible Mirrum was a little guilt of throwing the ardour with which she had planned the garden visits into their games of chance. There was a certain hungry restlessness about her movements which spoke not a little desperation…

Tiberias found himself idly wondering how long he could remain an unwilling buffer state between coldness - on both sides. Mirrum was not the _only_ one who had greeted Tiberias with a little frost. Certain of the King's attendants already had the vague conception Tiberias was markedly out of favour for some political slip, and was merely awaiting disgrace and confiscation of his lands as an outlawed nobleman…

Thank God Mirrum, at last, had thawed.

'Oh, there's duty aplenty, but – I shall have no gaming partner for as long as Sybilla chooses to idle her time in –' Tiberias pulled a grotesque face of false piety at Mirrum, 'Prayer, shall we say? The duties of a fervent woman?' Tiberias pushed the gaming board away from him with a impulsive motion of one hand. 'There! Take it. You'll be practicing the months you're away, I'll be sworn – making devilment for when you return to best me again…'

Mirrum smiled, meant to return some light pleasantry – but the smiled failed, became a little pinched at the corners of her mouth in sudden thoughtfulness. She stared at the little pieces frozen in their battered wood-hewn war. True, it was a remnant of her ancestors, a secret thing – it had never left the saddle-roll of her father in all his vague wanderings from monastery to monastery – but she felt oddly guilty about removing it. It was too curt – as though saying she were still offended. And whilst it had been a bitter struggle to forgive Tiberias – it would be a churlish thing to deny that she had forgiven him.

'Keep it,' she said, to her own astonishment. 'Games will keep.' The pinched edges of the smile broke a little, but she kept it pinned to her face, to show she meant goodwill. Tiberias looked almost as astounded as she – and oddly gratified, too, a slight relief unpuckering the habitual graven lines of his forehead. 'I – I am returning, after all…'

Tiberias looked at her both gravely and gently across the table, the candlelight softening his face a little. 'Of course you will,' he returned seriously. 'And in allowing me the lending of your game, lady, you show a kindness I did not expect from you.'

Mirrum flushed to the roots of her hair. 'I am sorry if- it is only a game, after all –'

'This means much to you. Sybilla, whilst generous to a fault, gives nothing that means _anything_ to her. What is precious to her she hoards, like a miser, because she cannot bear to lose _anything_.'

Tiberias had hardly meant to say so much, but struck by a courteous impulse – perhaps not entirely disconnected with an awkward sense of chivalry that had not plagued him since his long-forgotten youth – he rose as Mirrum stood to leave, and stooped over her hand to brush it with his lips for all the world as though she were some distant yet well-loved niece.

'I rather believe I shall miss you, girl-child,' he said puzzledly, as though he astonished even himself by the inexplicable vanities of the human condition. 'Jesu knows why…take care of Sybilla, eh? So you come home safe?'

'I – I shall,' stammered Mirrum, withdrawing her hand unthinkingly, as though she were a stiff Dutch doll, rather than a human being. It was so utterly unexpected in a gruff-and-glum bear like Tiberias...

'My lord…'

She practically fled from the room. Poor frightened quickwit, Tiberias thought exasperatedly. Sybilla's meddling had not quite loosened bits hold over her yet. Ah well. There were other considerations to take into hand…

* * *

Marcus Aurelius was a fine statesman and a good example of a human being borne down under the weighty affairs of state. His Meditations had been of more use to a ruler than the Bible is to a cleric. The Physician (whilst that brief, mayfly like being had lived instead of the King) had been almost ready to instruct Mirrum in its beauties – it was something he would perhaps have eagerly grasped at teaching after the subtleties of Catullus. Now – for kings are men, and men have their frailties and their moments of unreason and madness – the Meditations were being sifted through, restlessly, front to back, back to front, the linen spine fraying under the merciless treatment.

The little wisdom Marcus Aurelius had to offer might as well have been a reflection of Tiberias' cautions.

"_But a little while and I am dead, and all things are taken away. What more do I require, if my present work is the work of an intelligent and social creature, subject to the same law as God?"_

The gloved finger resting on this particular line started, angrily, and fumbled with the stiff pages a little while before closing the book with a cold kind of fury, and then tightly snapping it open again.

"_Let no-one any longer hear you finding fault with your life in a palace; nay, do not even hear yourself."_

This was borne a little longer, perhaps because he had often pondered on the sad truth of Marcus Aurelius' strictures on himself. That no matter how – for Marcus Aurelius had been a hale and hearty man, vigorously capable where politics were concerned – or what the time and place, kings were perhaps left alone with their dissatisfaction as they were with their high and lonely destiny as a ruler.

It was perhaps because he permitted himself to acknowledge the truth of this, that his gaze slid up the page in the eighth book of the Meditations.

"_Even if you break your heart, nonetheless they will do just the same."_


	22. Chapter 22

'Fools! Where are those horses?'

Leaving. Now it was come, there was a prickle of muted excitement in the air that swelled the veins and made the breathing flutter in the cool air. The dew was still falling- morning was as yet a yellow streak of lazy orange light; a genial glimmer, rather than the sun's usual tyranny of both earth and sky. It was the hour of journey-making in Jerusalem. The little courtyard Mirrum now knew so well near the offices of the Marshal of Jerusalem was choked with knights and men-at-arms as with weeds. Hardened travellers took advantage of the cool hours to press on with their voyages against the glaring oceans of rock and dust.

Sybilla had obviously not anticipated the ordered haste. There had been a little unease towards Damascus – mere shifting of position, a flexing of a threat in the direction of Jerusalem's bounds, and although neither side had overstepped the mark – as yet – it was only a matter of time before some reckless mercenary lord risked all for an hour's butchery. It had fallen quite beneath the princess' notice that Tiberias was anxiously increasing patrols in a fever of anxiety. She had... _other_ concerns that occupied her thoughts.

It showed in her garb. Mirrum had learned to tell. When Sybilla was at her most beautifully attired, it was when she had mentally armed herself for battle – and also, when she was at her most vulnerable. Today was favoured by another swirling sea of silk like a burst orange, shedding spilt colour like a patch of coloured glass over a blank wall, and she had covered her hair from the heat and dust of the road in a fantastical swirled turban of green and black broidered cloth. Mirrum wondered whether Sybilla thought herself very secret and very sly, that she had tied her headdress in a love-knot. Like the sort betrothed lovers shyly offer to each other...

There was a brief, pained tugging in the pit of Mirrum's stomach there, that made her wind her cloak-strings round her finger so it turned purple with the pressure. Human beings are not so very different after all, then? They all have the same weaknesses?

'_Maman!_'

A brief, plaintive cry came from somewhere close to the cracked stone tiles of the courtyard. A small, grave little personage (who could only be Sybilla's little Baldwin) was being hopelessly buffeted about the courtyard, spindly arms and legs flying as burly soldier-men lugged huge packs onto their shoulders and elbowed the little prince out of the way.

'Mind your manners, churl!' The maid clutching her (very small) liege lord's hand glared viciously in the direction of the men. 'elbowing _his majesty_ thus! I'm sorry milady, I tried to reason with him, but he would insist on bidding you farewell...'

'No harm in that,' Sybilla said absently, still casting an anxious look at the promising horizon before she dipped her cheek towards her son, drooping over her horse's neck. 'Ah, my little _petit; _you will be good and studious for your foolish, pretty _maman, non?_ You will forgive her for being so very foolish as to leave you for a time?' The note of appeal rang true – and although the little fair-haired prince could hardly have understood why his mother begged forgiveness of him, he clung to her as earnestly as if he understood her loneliness, letting go with a flush of angry colour that went to the roots of his hair.

But Mirrum, alone, and uneasy on her skittish horse amidst a sea of foot-soldiers, hardly noticed in an indistinct, not-there-at-all way, until a hand tugged at her skirts from the ground. Prince "Perseus" had slipped his nurse's hand again, eel-like in the throng.

'You will come back?' he said forlornly. '_Maman_ stays away months sometimes. You will make her come back?'

Mirrum was surprised, oddly touched. 'I –'

'Highness!' Too late. The nurse, thinning her lips, had caught sight of him again, and made a bound towards him, wimple knocked aside her flushed face. 'Little monkey, sidling away from your nurse! Disobedient children go to a bad place! Honour your betters!'

It has to be said, a life grown up when surrounded by indifferent servants breeds excellent liars. Little prince Perseus turned to scurry off, the very picture of bewildered innocence lost in a crowd. 'Make Maman come back soon! Please!'

And then he turned childish naiveté on like a charm. 'I did not mean to, nurse – I was afraid of being knocked down!' he wailed.

Mirrum watched him go, from inside the folds of the swathed embroidered hood. The last she saw of him was a fragile stick-figure in tunic and hose being remorselessly pulled about like a sawdust puppet by the old wetnurse; not an overly sentimental woman.

No wonder he wanted them to come back soon.

Sybilla, it seemed, had forgotten her son as soon as the embrace was over. Her face was flushed with one of her sudden rages at the lazy pace of her mounted guard. 'Are you simpletons? Are you doltish clowns? Half the best of the morning lost already, and to your mouthing and excuses! Six of you, and all fools! Bah – ready or no, I leave within an hour, howsoever my escort has chosen to ready itself! Faith, were I not merciful I would whip you into place –'

'The sun is hardly risen yet, my lady,' Ammet soothed, with the well-practiced tones of placating a fretsome and sullen child. 'It is barely four – we may be halfway to Ibelin before the sun is at its height.'

'That had best be so! If it is not, by Our Lady there will be a heavy price to pay for this tardiness!'

Sybilla threw up her hands in one of her quick cat-like gestures, and began to softly beat time against her horse's neck with the reins, the leather slapping softly in a quick rhythm. Pat-pat – pitter-pat. Pat-pat-pitter pat...

Mirrum stared up at the sky – cloudy, a little oppressive. The heat would be like the edge of a hot knife laid across the horizon by mid-day. Perhaps it was well they were travelling now.

'Lady-'

Mirrum turned her head in puzzlement. Was someone greeting Sybilla? She could see no-one approaching the now incensed princess...

'Lady! To your left, lady! No, don't look round. Don't seem to see me. Keep your eyes looking towards the gate...there.'

The voice was southern French, mixed with a soft intonance Mirrum recognised instantly from Ammet. A Saracen?

'I have a favour to ask of you. A message - No, don't speak, lady. Only if you answer my question. Are you the "Dane-lady?" '

Mirrum let out a gasp as though she had been punched in the stomach, her hands momentarily dropping the reins. Her jaw tightened, but had enough presence of mind to nod without looking behind her.

'Yes? I have something for you if you will be my message-bearer in turn. Tell Aminah, dutiful daughter of Ahmed that _all is ready for Damascus and the second moon_. You understand?'

'Who is Aminah?' Mirrum muttered from between tightly crimped lips.

'Oh, you will know her when you see her,' the voice said composedly. 'She will reveal herself to you, I have no doubt. You will bear it? Here...do not turn around. A reward for your silence and discretion.'

A paper packet was thrust into Mirrum's dangling sleeve. 'From my master, and your friend. And Abu Suleyman Dawud's blessings on his niece for her future. Farewell, lady...'

Mirrum snapped her head round like a snake, nearly straining her neck in her haste to see her mysterious messenger, but in the crowded throng there was no-one there. It would have been hard to pick out anyone in the sea of the blue livery of Jerusalem –bar the occasional white robes of some senior household servants. It would be easy for someone to dodge and avoid her glance...

'_Petite revenante! _Your place is beside Ammet!' Sybilla horse's capered impatiently, almost as restless as her mistress herself. 'Why do you tarry?'

Ammet, another identical stiff figure in a sarcenet cloak, kindly saw the way of things with Mirrum's stubborn horse and went back to jog amiably next to Mirrum. The disgraced guard of honour began the slow progress out through the westward gate, cantering at an even pace.

The paper package was a whisper of parchment chafing against Mirrum's wrist. It seemed to be burning a hole in her sleeve; surely Ammet would spot it? Sybilla? Mirrum was agonised – but she held tightly to it, her nails almost digging holes through it. It must remain hidden in her sleeve. Why, oh why did Ammet stay so close to her? Sybilla rode neck and neck with the vanguard, almost trying to keep ahead of them, never so much as gracing Jerusalem with a glance. Her thoughts were leaping ahead of the dusty threshold to Ibelin already.

Mirrum looked back, towards the hill where the dwindling gleam of roof told her the Palace lay amidst a sea of minarets. It was the same view she had first seen when she had come to Jerusalem the first time. And I am leaving it for the first time now, Mirrum thought. It's not the dust of a thousand saints any more. It's a secret I don't know and am too stupid to guess...

Who is Aminah? _My master and your friend? _HaveI become a spy for Salahuddin?

'Odd, isn't it? Leaving Jerusalem,' Ammet said conversationally, her knee nudging Mirrum's own as they rose. 'It is the third time I have left, but it still does not feel like home to me. It is too strange, yet I always like to return.' She shot Mirrum a brief amber-eyed glance, arch as a panther. 'The first time I came was on pilgrimage, too. Like you. But I was a child then, travelling with my family to the Holy Places. The second time...' Ammet drew in a soft low whistle. 'I came with my dowry-money to buy me a place at court as waiting woman.'

'Did you choose it?' Mirrum asked desperately, for want of something else to say. She felt she had to keep talking, or else Ammet would see she held her left hand in a clenched fist beneath her crimson sarcanet sleeve, and then she would _see._..

'What? Oh yes. Yes, I chose it.' Ammet looked down at her horse and idly patted his mane. 'My family has some little influence in Eastern politics. My father has the ear and respect of... powerful men. It was a matter of diplomacy to take _me._ Sybilla would not trust me with an inch of knowledge which might do her kingdom harm.' She half smiled. 'Besides, I didn't spy on _her_.'

Mirrum looked astonished. 'You didn't?'

'What would be the point? Sybilla isn't a threat.' Ammet clicked fondly in her horse's ear. 'The sun will be high before we reach Blanchegrarde. Our good lady Sybilla will be tormenting the horses unmercifully.'

And with a faintly mocking smile that belied her words, she remained in a quietly satisfied silence for most of the road, and spoke no more about the affairs of princes.

Or herself.

The journey was much like the one Mirrum remembered towards Jerusalem – oceans of bleak sand and rock drawn into defensive whirls of spiked stone, as though nature itself were drawn into fortifying herself against man. There is a danger on looking out too long and hard at empty horizons. Sailors feel it at sea – the endless blue, the lack of place, of time itself even – a transcendent thing, like looking at the unfathomable nature of God. Small wonder men can go mad exposed to it too long.

The road to Ibelin was not quite so desolate – not quite. There were huddled settlements from time to time, like islands of civilisation. And fellow travellers; the dim and solemn silhouettes of a pilgrim caravanserai crossing the sand to break the monotony. But the emptiness allows dim thoughts to grow huge and monstrous in the void, and jogging uneasily on the horse seemed to make Mirrum's thoughts beat to the time of the hooves, slow and tired: if-only-we-were-there, if-only-we-were-there...

'We draw close!' Sybilla, still skittering ahead and matching pace with her guard, came racing back, slapping her handmaids on the back with an air of wide-eyed self-congratulation. 'I feared we wouldn't see it until tomorrow – that we would have to stop for nightfall... Isn't it _surpassing beautiful?'_


	23. Chapter 23

Neither Ammet nor Mirrum saw Ibelin in quite the fashion that their mistress did, and both stared at the view unfolding itself from the landscape with an air of quiet and puzzled bemusement.

Ibelin, like many places, was dry and dusty. It had always been dry and dusty, a bare handful of struggling date palms and olive trees gasping out poor little choking breaths and stretching out feeble roots like pleading hands for water, and it had been a source of some indifference to the late Godfrey of Ibelin. Had he wished to be a farmer he would have stayed in France, he had often said with amusement. It was the only thing he was fitted for. Let it go on as it had begun; he was quite content with the patch of earth that he had earned, and he felt no need to change it. And so the Castle of Ibelin had a pleasing informality about it that other lord's fiefs had not; a sort of pleasing devil-may-care attitude to custom. It was a sprawling mass of clay brick arranged in a neat quadrangle around a squat lump of towers, with a crooked, crumbling veranda staring straight towards the East – remnants of the original owner's piety. It was a sad sight, in many ways. Sybilla did not see it so now, but Ibelin had an air of quietly returning back to the clay-coloured earth it was raised from, unnoticed, and scarcely mourned for.

But yet, once you noticed the decay, the air of neglect that had pervaded the place, you had time to notice that this was not being allowed to continue. There was fresh mortar strengthening the walls; peasants busily hacking at the ground packed almost as hard as rock, turning over an unreceptive soil. But there were not many. Indeed, the fields seemed curiously empty...

'Ah. Look,' Sybilla's eyes were smiling above her dark face-cloth. 'See? The Lord of Ibelin is still a peasant at heart...'

She pointed to a cloud of dust barely visible below the dip of the land; a heavy crowd of eager country-folk were gathered about something below. Some artisan's mechanical contrivance, Mirrum supposed, wearily. She was hot, too hot, and the sun made her head ache profusely. All she wanted to do was find a dark, cool place and rest...

The letter crackled as she shifted her grip on the reins. She stopped, willing it not to be heard.

'Well-digging?' Ammet sounded amused. 'He is well-educated for a Frankish knight.'

'Well-educated and kindly and free!' Sybilla murmured. 'He can be both knight and one of the people in the same instant.' She was staring hard – not at the dim, dusty figure in loose shirt and hose straining with rope to hoist some great wooden contraption to the heavens, although her thoughts surely clouded about him – but at the work-lined faces working with him, exchanging mutual grins of exultation when the task was done that had no trace of fearful respect, no nervous deference to a powerful over-lord. 'He makes himself one of them and they love him for it – for making himself human...' For a moment Sybilla's voice sounded much younger with sadness; it had a keening, wistful not that seemed almost to sob. 'Why isn't the world like _this_? It would be a much kindlier, easier place to find God in, Ammet. I don't think I ever found it...yet...' Her voice trailed away.

One keen-eyed, quick little urchin of the fields had caught sight of the colourful Royal Progress trotting down the dirt road, and leapt up, haring on swift legs like a rabbit towards the master of Ibelin.

'They've seen us,' Sybilla said briskly. 'Spur your horses! We must canter in as though we have galloped all the way. Ammet, ride to my left. Mirrum, you may follow behind. Obedience and silence, my maids - for now...'

It must be said, Mirrum was forced to re-evaluate her estimation of Balian of Ibelin. Her initial impression had been one of an amiable lordling; surprised, no doubt, by his change in sphere, but quite content to sit idle in the place assigned him by Fate. Harmless had been her first impression; Sybilla was seeking to amuse herself with someone who would do her no harm in the seething hothouse of court. But... But...

Having seen Sybilla's nerves on the road, and remembering the way Sybilla had touched her own face, smiled oddly to herself in corners... Mirrum felt an odd pang of companionship, of empathy for her mistress. She didn't pretend to understand Sybilla – even Sybilla did not know herself, so why should she? But the shivering, fluttering hopelessness of her own feelings convinced her– and the nerves, shining for a moment vulnerable and wide-eyed from Sybilla's blue-grey eyes before the courtly Princess made a proud mask of her face. Sybilla loved. Deeply, although she would not admit it yet – and with the same hopeless churn of feelings within her breast that made a whirlpool of her heart and created storms within her soul. She must have felt the same safety, the same refuge that day they rode to meet the new Lord of Ibelin, as Mirrum had felt in the...

In the garden.

If Mirrum were like Sybilla, and could ride where she pleased, wouldn't she tremblingly make pilgrimage 'to Cana' for the sake of a glimpse of the Physician?

I can't hate her, Mirrum thought wearily, to the sick pounding of the blood in her brain from the heat and the dust. I can't. She's too much like me; and besides, she's too unhappy for me to wish ill on her. I pity her too much. Lord, forgive her. She knew not what she did. Sybilla would (perhaps, although here Mirrum guessed rather than knew for certain) have been deeply grieved to think she had stopped the skip of a heartbeat much like her own...

Who _is_ Aminah? How will I know her when I see her?

_Am_ I a traitor?

Mirrum dragged her thoughts from this last troubled puzzle of the road and forced her attention on the dirt-caked, motley figure, looking warily at the retinue from the rise of the hill. The little boy gesticulated excitedly, tugging on his sleeve; and then, almost reluctantly, but with a quickness in his loping stride that suggested not a little surprise, the master plunged forward towards the party in a hesitant gesture of welcome. The pilgrimage was not expected, then. Mirrum had vaguely anticipated something of a mutual tryst.

Balian of Ibelin presented a very different spectacle _here_ to the courteous, quiet man with the soft eyes that Mirrum had seen in Jerusalem. He looked within his natural element – but there was a faintly unsettling wildness about him that suggested all was not the placid nature he had reached at last. He had endured his share of tempests and storms in his time, and if he no longer raged and howled in his soul it was not for want of desolation. But the quiet was there now – and the 'peace that passeth all understanding' in Balian's face defied the dirt and showed more nobility than Guy de Lusignan could ever hope to muster...

'I am on my way to Cana,' Sybilla said blithely, her eyes crinkling behind the veil over her nose and mouth. It was an excellent effect; all Balian saw were a pair of burning blue-grey eyes in an elegant, invisible face. He stared as though heat struck.

Sybilla dropped her veil; although there was less imperious daring in it than there had been at their first meeting. It was more frank, and less like a favour. More like a generous gift shared only between close friends. 'Where Jesus changed water to wine? But a better trick would be to turn you into a nobleman...'

Had anyone else but Sybilla said it, it would have been a grotesque insult. As it was, it was faintly conspiratorial; it spoke of a disdain for rules that positively urged the listener to smile back and join in the conspiracy.

'That should be easy.' Balian returned, with an amiable deftness that made Mirrum's eyes widen with fresh respect. 'In France a few yards of silk can make a nobleman.'

Sybilla liked wit; her smile died from her lips and shone in her eyes, appraising him once more. And very much elated by the fresh quality she saw in him too.

She hardly needed to ask for hospitality. Poor creature, Mirrum thought. He's infected too –the surprise was a welcome one, from rare certain softness in his smile. Although it was mixed with an appreciable fear; no-one, not even Balian, it seemed, could quite understand Sybilla. He didn't know what she wanted yet. He'd soon learn, a faintly jealous voice said at the back of Mirrum's thoughts. It was the sort of thought Mirrum would have to do penance for.

But not now.

The letter was left carefully folded inside the sarcenet cloak with Mirrum's saddlebags once they had urged their tired horses to the courtyard. It could not be read until later – much later, when the household was asleep. Mirrum took no chances this time. Besides, as attendant to a Royal Progress there was much to be done. Balian had clearly improved upon what he knew, but he had still left chickens scuttling about the solar in the sort of cheerful domestic chaos that would have disgraced even Dame Juliana.

'Typical of the man, of course' Sybilla said, peering interestedly at the simple bed. 'Forgoes any comfort for himself to slave in the fields like a serf.' She smiled. 'Do you think he has something of the saint about him? Like punishment for the flesh?'

'I think he probably forgot he had to sleep at all, lady.' Ammet murmured wickedly. 'Fie, there's hardly any fresh linen at all! _What manner of sty do you allow your master to live in, pig?!'_ Ammet was bitingly good at commanding the handful of timid little Arab girls who scuttled about the household like brightly-coloured moths. They quailed in front of her fury like forlorn puppies. _'Have you no pride? Fetch more!'_

'Problem?' A deep, guttural voice inquired. Mirrum turned distractedly, her hands full of Sybilla's silks. A genial smooth-pated giant was peering good-humouredly in at the flurry of women-servants. To her amazement, he spoke with the halting heavy accents she had known in her grandfather, even a little in her father – the old Germanic tongue.

'No, no – only Ammet rousing the servant-girls. She is a little...harsh...'

The giant's face had brightened hopefully. '_Nederlander?' _ he said eagerly, eyes resting with delight on Mirrum's crop of feathery hair and pale features, bursting into a stream of energetic German that Mirrum could not follow. She shook her head in regret.

'English. My forefathers were _Danske_, but...'

'Ah,' The man said, disappointedly, before another huge smile creased his face. 'But lost in _this_ part of the world, ja? Hah, that is good! Not many fair-haired girls here. How are you named?'

'I...er...' Mirrum worked out the question. 'Miriam?'

'Almaric!' he boomed, clapping Mirrum on the back in a friendly gesture that nearly sent Sybilla's gowns tumbling to the dirt. 'Name of king before last. I come here with my brother – three, maybe four years ago. Brother dead in France now. Only I am left. My home is dead to me, so – I stay.' He grinned, amicably. 'Help Lord Balian look after his patch of dusty dirt. Whilst you -you look after you pretty singing bird, _ja_?'

'S-singing bird?'

'Your mistress. Singing bird.' Almalric said patiently, scratching his shaven pate. 'She sings prettily like a little nightingale, but still bored. That is how she come to play in Lord Balian's patch of dirt, he?'

Mirrum recovered some sense of Sybilla's dignity here, and frowned with the sort of hauteur she imagined Ammet possessed.

'I don't know what you mean, I'm sure,' she said frostily. 'I have much work to attend to, master...'

'Come now, don't pull the face at me!' Almalric pulled a face in return, scrunching up his features into a mimicry of Mirrum's scowl. 'You must know your mistress well, ja? I say nothing. But Ibelin is not on the way to Cana. Cana..._that_ way.' He pointed at the horizon. 'Many, many miles from Ibelin.'

What should Mirrum say?! Was Sybilla so transparent? She flushed, turning beetroot red, her hands fidgeting with the silks in her hand.

'_Mirrum- mooncalf! Give me those!'_ Ammet made an unlikely saviour, but she strode in as a knight-errant, snatching the forgotten things from Mirrum's hand. '_Sloth! My lady would be in a fine mood indeed to find you gossiping with serving-men instead of readying her bath. We have all we require, thank you,' _she added icily to Amalric, who stood staring in admiration. _'You may be about your duties.'_

'_And thank me for saving your hide,' _she added_, sotto voce, _as the giant ambled off_. 'It may be common knowledge that Sybilla makes merry here. But it does not do to confirm the fact by a frightened denial, hmm? Discretion! And I have seen to Sybilla's bath. We are free now for a few hours until she chooses to sleep. She may not care for our presence after all when she...retires...'_

Now, Mirrum had not been entirely idle. In the cool of Ibelin she had recovered from the confusion of her thoughts, and she had suddenly grasped upon a truth that had been eluding her since she had left Jerusalem.

'Your name isn't really Ammet, is it?' she said, looking intently into the tall girl's eyes. 'That's one of Sybilla's names for you, like I am _petit revenante_ to her. Your real name is–'

'Speak soft!!' Ammet's face flashed into momentary anger, her sharp-chinned face contorted by momentary indecision. 'How do you-'

Mirrum permitted herself a smile – a slightly acid one. For so long Ammet had been the worldly-wise cynic, admonishing, occasionally chastising – always amused at poor mad little Mirrum as one might be amused by the idiot antics of a child. It was quite a moment of exultation to have gained the upper hand. 'Come now,' she said lightly. 'Somewhere else? What have we to do except talk? We have no-one else to tell except each other, and it is a hard life caught in the middle...'

Ammet said nothing, her lips thinning, and for one moment Mirrum feared she would not come. But she merely said, stiffly, 'As you please,' and swept hastily into a narrow doorway with an angry sweep of her skirts.

There was coolness and silence in the brick wine vaults of Ibelin – well, merely a few steps down from the packed earth, and the castle tumbled up overhead. And there was room enough for two slightly-built girls to crawl between two vast wine jars and stare suspiciously at each other.

Ammet was the first to laugh.

'It's a bad day when the spies watch each other instead of their duty!' she said easily. 'God, it's hard to hate you, _Maryam. _But you would never make a spy in another lifetime. You are too honest.'

'Yes,' Mirrum said bluntly, watching the quick olive-skinned face smile. 'And you're Aminah. Aren't you? The 'dutiful daughter of Ahmed?''

'Yes.' The newly-discovered Aminah said plainly. 'And I would like to tell you a little more, if I may, than you learnt on the road. I chose spying as a way out of...well...' she frowned, biting her lip. 'A future I found irksome. It was to buy myself a little time under pretence of helping my people. I did Sybilla no harm – Oh, I know you doubt me there, but politically she is like her brother, may he find peace at last. She would not provoke war of herself.' Ammet tilted her head to one side. 'But it isn't just her, is it? When the poor little child is King, the regent's consort is Guy de Lusignan.' Ammet spat in the dust disgustedly. 'I can read Greek too, although I don't admit it as frankly as you do. I know what that son of a mongrel dog wrote in his letters. That and more besides. It is well Lord Salahuddin should know who he deals with. My uncle, he has influence in Jerusalem; if only for a little while. I daresay it was he who told you who I was? He is a conscientious physician, and loyal to your King...'

'Physician?!'

'Oh yes. Trusted by the King's father. His skill is renowned as a healer,' Ammet said, looking surprised. 'He thought it no ill thing we should know things will not remain the same after the King's death... you look pale!'

'Your uncle, did you say?' Mirrum said weakly. 'No – that... that is wrong! It cannot be he – that is, I was given a message, and it wasn't by _him..._ the voice was different... I – is your uncle the only physician to the King?'

'Why so sharp?'

'It's important, Ammet! Is _he_?'

'Oh, there are plenty of attendants, I suppose, under him. But my uncle is the _Royal Physician_. There may be lesser apothecaries- I do not know.'

'Oh.' Mirrum breathed again – more slowly. 'I was told to tell you something.'

'Yes?'

'That _all is ready for Damascus and the second moon_.'

The change that spread across Ammet's face was beatific; a look of wondering uncertainty, then pure joy – and finally a sort of exulting rapture as she swiftly reached across and briefly hugged Mirrum fiercely by the shoulders.

'You cannot imagine how _long_ I have waited for such news!' she breathed. 'I knew it! Well, he could hardly have done anything in Jerusalem. _Here_, though... Ah Mirrum... I wish I could tell you what that means. I rather think I will at the end. _Promise me _that... should I take a fancy for a midnight walk, you will accompany me?' Ammet gave her an earnest look. 'You are my friend, odd little thing though you are. I'd like to think we have not been enemies?'

'Never,' Mirrum assured her firmly, although more bewildered than ever. And not a little downhearted. Ammet – she knew it! Guessed it! Was leaving.

It would just be Mirrum and Sybilla then.

'God's bones!' Mirrum said aloud to herself, as she wandered back to the narrow room where she and Ammet kept their things. It was a good oath; Tiberias was particularly apt at using sharp, short words that eloquently demonstrated the measure of feeling.

Lord Tiberias. She missed _him_ already, strange though that sounded. Now was about the hour that the hnefatatl pieces would have leapt into play. But Ammet was clearly about some mysterious errand of her own, she knew no-one in Ibelin (bar the friendly giant Almalric, and he but slightly) and Sybilla?

A light laugh rippled from the veranda. Sybilla.

She was robed in gorgeous silk gauze robes in red and gold like a queen - the queen she was and would be. But not as she would have stiffly sat at Court. Sybilla sat with her hair loose about her shoulder like a bride, feet curled under her on the low settle, and smiled. Mirrum would not have thought it possible from the sad, proud seraphim Sybilla had been at their first meeting, but a young girl with laughing eyes seemed to have taken the place of the Princess of Jerusalem. She looked young, younger than Mirrum herself - although that was no great feat at the moment. Mirrum felt old. Sad, and centuries old, as though she were Eve and had seen whole civilisations rise and fall in a tumble of dust, and all the happiness burning in Sybilla's thin face in the quiet dusk had a melancholy impermanence about it that only Mirrum could see.

She let the curtain fall that separated her from her mistress, and left Sybilla to her bliss. Maybe Tiberias' cynicism was settling on her like specks of sand. An odd friend...

Friend. That was the word that jolted her to her senses. She had forgotten. What Ammet's uncle had said before they took the road to Ibelin. Friend. _From my master, and your friend._

With a faint sick plunge in her heart, Mirrum dipped her head and bent towards the fallen folds of her cloak, and felt for the paper packet in the hanging sleeve.

It was still there.


	24. Chapter 24

Mirrum's first thought was not to open it.

What if it wasn't what she thought? What if she was drawn still deeper into the shadowy business of Ammet – or rather Aminah – and her spying? What if –

I don't care, Mirrum thought recklessly, and quick as a flash snatched the packet from its hiding place. She clutched it jealously to her chest, scurrying quickly back towards the wine cellar. Even Ammet would have been hard put to find her again. Mirrum was a slightly built girl; she was still the pale hopping little sparrow of a creature she had been with the goodly Dame. And crawling further into the labyrinth of terracotta wine-pitchers was a sure fortress against eavesdroppers or watchers. The sun was dying now – nothing but the faint suggestion of warmth in the crumbling mud daub of the wall to suggest the raging heat of a merciless Eastern clime.

An insect clicked its way over the wall, seemingly directly next to Mirrum's left ear as she stared at the letter. That what was she remembered, later. After...

Well. Many, many things had happened afterwards. A lifetime of new understanding. It is a common thing amongst humanity - that it is not the moment of discovery that is remembered, but the little things. A certain aroma of wine, and the clicking footsteps of a beetle could carry Mirrum back across the years long after she was an old woman. But for now all her attention was absorbed in the parchment folded in her lap.

It was fine paper. Poor scribes and scholars did not often see its like; it was the sort of beautiful creamy vellum used for the best books, fine Mass books or Bibles – breviaries for noblemen or kings, perhaps. Mirrum turned it over, hands quivering tentatively over the seal. It was a blank; no clue there to the sender. Could it even be Tiberias? After all this? Might he simply have sent on her hnefatatl board and – perhaps Aminah was his spy...

No! It was too complicated – that would never make sense, and even if it did-

'I don't want to open it,' Mirrum said firmly. 'That's why. Stupid little ghost!'

Using Sybilla's pet name for her must have urged on her courage. Squeezing her eyes firmly shut, Mirrum broke the seal with her fingernails, felt along the edges as the parchment slowly crackled outwards – and was very much astonished when her fingers met strange dried papery stuff that fell in flakes over her hands as she sifted through the pages...

She blinked, and opened her eyes. There had been white jessamine laid in between the pages. Sad, spindly stalks dried stiff as twigs and crushed papery petals were all that remained – that and a faint fragrance seemingly bled into the paper along with the fragile life of the flowers. They had not survived the journey to Ibelin well. Two, three, - no, four sheets of close writing – as Mirrum held the first page up with hands that shook for the first time. The flowers were like a blow to the stomach, sharp and quick; she knew what they meant. She could still see them - resting lightly between the pages of a book on the lip of a fountain, so long ago. So very long ago.

The handwriting she didn't recognise. She had never seen the note in the _Carmine ._

_She had no knowledge that the Physician had written to her before._

But she could see something of the agitation of the writer's mood in the way the scribing changed. Mirrum knew the written word almost as she knew breathing.

_Dane Lady, there is a tale – an old tale, an old Breton lay that must, in truth, be the last inheritance from the first Taking of the Cross. It was told to me a long time ago- too long ago. Perhaps you may have heard of it. A lady is loved by four knights, and three fall in battle. All of them were equally worthy, but the last escapes death – though sorely wounded. The lady chooses to mourn all four as though they were dead. It was originally the 'Four Sorrows' when sung but they changed the name – it became the 'Unhappy One,' for the fate of the sorrowful knight who lived. For although the knight was now free to love the lady – he was no closer to her than when the other three still rivalled him. Her grief separated them like a wall, and he could no more lay hold of her than he could a ghost._

Here the writing changed from its strained, even formal script into something like a desperate scrawl.

_God forgive me, I think I am half-mad to write so to you. I have never written aught like this before; I have made many attempts to address you on paper tonight – and yet if I speak the false proprieties of wooing, it would be a lie. And I cannot lie to you here. Not now. The reason I speak of the story is because I believe I have learnt what it means to be the 'Unhappy One.' Le Chaitivel. _

Mirrum's breathing seemed to have almost stopped. She blinked, lids rasping over eyelids that seemed as dry as dust. Like the momentary choked sob that escaped her lips. But she collected herself, and read on.

_It is not because we are so separated, Dane-lady – I know you better than that, and I would not believe so much ill of someone I know to be a kindly and of keen feeling. But there are more distances between you and your foolish dolt of a Physician –_

The word was partially scribbled out, in an angry spurt of ink.

_-than mere misunderstanding, and I would not leave you grieving in the dark for a sudden separation. I cannot use the hackneyed phrases of indifferent love to tell you I will die of grief without your affection ..._

Mirrum didn't understand quite how grief-stricken the next close few sheets of writing were. It was true they were sadly smudged and smeared.

_Jesu knows we die soon enough. But for all I am alike to the Unhappy One, and I too can no more kiss you or embrace you than though you were spun of pale cloud; what I feel for you, Dane Lady, leaves me bewildered and forlorn and mazes my wits. If this be love I cannot tell; I was never tutored in it. It was – and is – a closed door to me. Le Chaitivel at least had speech with his lady; which we can never have again._

'_Never_.' It was a bleak word to repeat to oneself alone.

_I could not see you leave without knowing this. What you do with this knowledge – is for you. A parting gift, if you like. It will keep._

The reminder of the teasing guessing game of names should have made Mirrum smile. It only made her sob the harder. And the letter closed in a confused tangle of sorrow and anger and pain that was a more fearsome puzzle than the Gordian knot.

_I can write no more. May God pardon my pride! I dare not write more..._

_But you have my fealty, my silence, and –_

_You know you have my love._

It was unsigned.

Mirrum's hands quivered, trembling uncontrollably as she set down the paper. She stopped, touched the last line reverently with one fingertip, looked at it. She tried to smile. It was a poor failure of a smile; watery, weak, helpless – and it disintegrated like a face drawn in sand when water flows over it.

For the first time since the stony eclipse of Sybilla's pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Mirrum threw her head forward, buried her tousled pale head in the skirts of her cotte, and wept, howling into the linen, hands bunched convulsively round the letter. It still smelt faintly of jessamine as well as ink.

It was well for the barrels, and the cellar, that they muffled Mirrum in blessed understanding silence. It was better than any awkward words of comfort ever could be.

It was only when there light began to dwindle and fade, and the gloom of the barrels grew too dark, that Mirrum emerged from her hiding-place. There was no more light to read the words again and again. Nothing more remained but for Mirrum to climb stiffly from her cramped position up into the twilight.

But it was a different Mirrum who clambered out, with calm face and measured tread, than the frightened love-sick girl who had scurried away like a rat in a hole. In the midst of sorrow there is a quiet place, and for all the letter had grieved her - it had rowelled her heart like a screaming mare through all the cavorting terrors of emotion – it had also given her a strong sense of bleak peace, at the last. So. The tranquil Physician felt as she did too. He, who had always seemed oddly above such things - not from choice, perhaps, but just... separate. But _he..._he had written to her – perhaps doubting it would ever find her, perhaps doubting whether to send it at all – and in the depths of misery he turned to paper – to attempt to reveal that she was not alone. They would never meet again; the letter had made that painfully clear, from the tone, but – wherever they were, they would feel the same.

So this is love. Not what the minstrels sing of – and it wasn't Sybilla's sort of love, either. Not Aminah's love for her people, nor Tiberias' sad sense of loyalty for his king... nor poor Prince 'Perseus', with his love for his pretty _maman_ who frightens him with her over-protective love by turns. Does everyone have their own different sort of love? Does anyone else feel as I do? For the poor 'Chaitivel' Physician?

It doesn't matter now, Mirrum thought carefully to herself. It needs must be carefully, for she would not allow herself to cry again. I can endure, at least – now I know.

She looked round – carefully, lest there should be some servant about, and hastened to her room. Ammet was a drowsy huddle of cloak and byrchans in the corner, her saddle-cloth rolled into a ball of sleep. Sybilla's bed was still empty.

She had not returned yet.

There was still a lighted taper waiting for her mistress, though. Mirrum went over to it, casting a sharp glance at Ammet. There was no feigning sleep there? Well, what did it matter. Ammet had her secrets. She could sympathise – but she could never, never know the truth. Besides, what is there in a handful of ashes?

Mirrum gently – with a terrible effort, for it felt as though she were burning a child in the shape of the maze of words in her hands - withdrew the letter from the hiding place in her skirts, and held it to the flame, steadily, until there was nothing left. She turned her face away, though. She could not bear to see the words disappear in smoke. It was only by the heat near her fingertips that she knew it was done. Wincing a little, she let the last piece crumble into ash, and then sat there, staring straight ahead.

'_Mirrum?' _

'I'm going to bed soon, Ammet. I'm not sleepy tonight.' Mirrum said, still staring straight ahead. 'Is Sybilla not abed yet?'

'_Still talking with Lord Balian.'_ Ammet yawned. _'She seems happy. I'll not begrudge her that, ...provided she doesn't begrudge me mine. I doubt she will. She's in love.'_

'Yes. That's good,' Mirrum said vaguely. 'Everyone should be in love. Just once.'

'_Are you sure you're all right?'_

'Yes... I think so.'

It wasn't long before Ammet's prophecy of 'Sybilla' in love turned more quickly to 'they are in love.' It was not so much in anything they said, or did – but in the way they looked at each other almost shyly, as though they hardly knew what it would come to or where it would lead. Sybilla looked younger, forgot to prime herself with the arts of courtly beauty . To Ammet's great glee, she even forgot to mind her skin and turned quite speckled over the bridge of her nose with pretty pale-brown freckles. And Sybilla did not even mind.

Mirrum didn't notice. But then she didn't notice much at the moment. Sybilla might have shaken her, had she been as impatient as she was in her Court mood. There was a permanent air of ...vacancy, a quiet listlessness about Mirrum's spirit, that suggested she was elsewhere. She would merely have swayed back into place after a shaking from Sybilla. But Sybilla was in her sunny, happy Ibelin mood.

'You miss Jerusalem, don't you,' she said lightly. 'Petit revenante, I had no idea you were so greatly attached to our kingdom!'

'I miss the city - my lady.' Mirrum's jaw went tight.

'Ah, Tiberias will miss you too, no doubt!' Sybilla laughed merrily. 'I wonder at you both, you know – you would make him a nice quiet mistress. You would suit him tolerably well! And I am quite sure he would love you well in return... There! But it would never have done, and –'

'I am done with love,' Mirrum said suddenly, her jaw still taut as a coiled spring.

Sybilla suddenly looked hurt, bewildered, and Mirrum felt as though she had struck at a puppy yapping at the sunshine. 'I – I would have quarrelled terribly with the lord Marshal, my lady,' she said, trying to let a note of merriment enter her voice. 'And you know we should never match as you think...'

Sybilla looked at her, uncertain – and then laughed, unwillingly. She had not been fooled. 'Yes...' she said slowly. 'I suppose you should not...'


	25. Chapter 25

Mirrum gave up trying to wound Sybilla after that. To tell the truth she was ashamed, and her spirit recoiled within her at the action. Besides, Sybilla's eyes had been startled, even a little _hurt_ – and they had much the same look as poor Prince Perseus when he thought a whipping was forthcoming for a garbled date in history or a misremembered piece of etiquette.

Mirrum did not want to hurt Sybilla.

I would never have dared to do it to Dame Juliana, Mirrum thought with a pang. I would have got a smart beating myself for my pains. I only dare to do it because Sybilla is kindly, and vulnerable, and because I am selfish and sullen and vain and I have not been to confession for nigh two weeks, and I am sure that this is mortal sin, and it can't be a... a... sin of necessity. To dwell so _long_ on things. And Sybilla deserves to be happy, deserves to have the chance to love a little. Love is important. And I think Sybilla needs love, even if loving poor Lord Balian is like a moth loving a candle-flame. Does it matter if the flame loves the moth in return? He is _good_. Perhaps too good.

That, indeed, seemed to be part of the reason for the lengthy stay at Ibelin. It was not for lack of inclination – Sybilla could have happily dwelt there for ever. You could see it in her face. Sybilla laughing at small, mud-stained children dabbling their hands in the stream. Sybilla, sipping wine as Mirrum and Ammet fumbled in a teasing wind with an awning to protect Sybilla's pale skin from further freckles. Sybilla looking pensive, a little sad, as she watched Ammet loop whorls of henna-ed dots around her fingers and palms in an intricate spiral that seemed to mimic the _Danse Macabre_ painted on the solar wall.

But Lord Balian was clearly... _different_ to anyone Sybilla could have chosen in court. And it was because of his quiet, wary difference that Mirrum wondered. He was courtesy itself; ever the polite, accommodating host. Sometimes even an uncertain host, when Sybilla tested the boundaries of daring; slyly brushing his fingers as they dined, occasionally approaching her lips to his ear as she leant over to speak of some amusing gossip of the Court. But...

Lord Balian was different in that he _was_ a good man. Not innocent exactly – wary if he was politically unsure of where to tread. But he loved the land with something Mirrum recognised from home. It was an earth-passion. It was _his_, and because it was his he would work for it, help it, coax it into something different from the dry, poor little patch of dust it had been, make it grow verdant, into the strange, unhealthy lushness of the East Mirrum had never grown used to. Sybilla plainly loved him for it. She could imagine herself happy here. Mirrum thought she could guess that Sybilla was pretending to herself she was mistress of Ibelin. And Balian.

And yet _he_ avoided trespassing into the love of a Princess...

Sybilla stirred, restlessly, and turned to one side, scrabbling her fingers impatiently.

'My lady, you move.' Ammet said reproachfully. The paint will smear if you twitch so!'

'What?' Sybilla withdrew her gaze from the middle distance. 'Oh. Yes.'

Ammet prepared Sybilla's hands with deep concentration and a goose-feather quill, occasionally breaking off to dip the tip in a little clay saucer filled with the dye. Mirrum watched in fascination. She was not yet proficient enough in the art of a handmaiden to attempt it, yet – although she hoped to do well. Writing was_ surely_ excellent practice for making the little pin-pricks of ink marking Sybilla's long fingers...

Something prodded Mirrum, sharply. Whether by accident or design, Ammet had pricked the back of Mirrum's hand as she loaded her quill with henna. Her eyes flickered meaningfully towards the dish.

There was a roll of old rag there. Ammet used it to clean the quill when she burdened it with too much dye.

Mirrum's hand edged crabwise towards it –

'You leave my hair in disarray, Mirrum,' Sybilla said, without turning her head. 'If you feel idle you might dress it for me.'

'I beg pardon, my lady.' Mirrum turned, a picture of bewildered frowsy innocence. 'I shall braid it for you –'

'No – arrange the combs, that is all. Let it lie loose.' Sybilla raised a hand to pat the tendrils at her temple – delicate wisps of fine dark hair. 'I shall not require your services tonight, ladies. You are entirely at leisure.'

Ammet paused, feather in hand. 'You do not wish us to attire you for the evening?'

'I can be my own handmaiden,' Sybilla said, with some little frowning asperity directed towards Ammet. 'I have two hands, as do you. It's an idle fancy for solitude, no more.'

Mirrum paused, comb in hand – and then carefully slid it into Sybilla's hair, pretending she was a wooden doll again.

An idle fancy for solitude!

Ammet made fierce eyes at the rag, and then at Mirrum, deftly snatching the last comb from Mirrum's fingers. 'She is out of practice, my lady – allow me to arrange your hair.'

Mirrum withdrew, silent as a wraith – but a wraith that had picked up the little dish of henna, then goose-feather quill... and the rag.

Ammet had daubed in straggling Frankish letters a crude message on the linen.

OUR MIDNIGHT WALK IS TONIGHT. MOONRISE. BE THERE.

* * *

It was late – very late, when Ammet returned from Sybilla's chambers. Apparently Sybilla had changed her mind about attiring herself, and for once Ammet had been silently complicit in Sybilla's confidences. She said nothing when she returned to the little whitewashed cell that was their quarters.

'_Is it far past moonrise?' _she said, with a pinched, anxious face.

'Not much.' Mirrum was fully dressed and wary. 'Why all the mystery, Ammet? Why do I need to accompany you?'

'_You don't have to come.'_ Ammet said, turning and planting herself squarely in front of her. _'But I'd like it if you did. As friends. No harm to you.'_

'As friends.' Mirrum repeated.

'We must walk a little way from Ibelin.' Ammet was feverishly gathering together her bedroll, heaping what few possessions she had into the roll. Mirrum noticed a flash of silver that must have been the knife vanish into the parcelled fabric; so she had had one after all. 'Not far. Just outside the walls.'

'Why...'

Ammet looked up. _'I'm not coming back, Mirrum.'_ She said, with a dark smile. _'You're hopeless as a handmaiden, but I'm sure you'll learn, and you're cleverer with Sybilla than I am. She'll not miss me . This was the best possible way it could have turned out, really ... What's one maiden more or less in a retinue? In Jerusalem it would have meant...questions.'_

'You're leaving?' Mirrum's stomach, to her surprise, pulled in tight, curdling in dismay. 'Forever, then...?'

'_Why, I do believe you'll miss me!'_ Ammet said in surprise. There was the hint of a saddened smile turning up the corners of her mouth._ 'I'll miss you too, Mirrum. In fact I ...No, I have nothing to stay for now.'_ She half-smiled. _'Come. Walk with me. I'll show you all.'_

Ibelin was beautiful under the night sky. The dust of the earth became an indistinct grey veil beneath a sky that was like a spilt bolt of Sybilla's silks. It was a dreamy, gauzy blue– and gilded here and there by a seam of starry constellation. At any other time, it would have taken Mirrum's breath away. It held all the mysterious beauty of Eastern nature in one soft horizon.

But tonight was a night to follow with watchful step and quick breath in Ammet's wake – to start with jarring nerves at a dog barking, the clang of a fallen cooking pot, a light – sudden, faint, but then out again.

'_Peace! It might be him... ah, no. It is too close.'_ Ammet sounded disappointed. '_He is no fool to venture near to discovery.'_

She half-turned. '_You must be curious as to who I mean. Well – it's not just you and Sybilla that...' _Ammet's breath snagged in her throat. _'A light! He's here!'_

On the far horizon, almost at the point where earth met sky in the middle distance, there flickered a pin-prick of wavering light. Bit it dipped sharply – twice, three times – too regularly to be purely by accident.

It was a signal.

Ammet let out a strangled exclamation that was half-exasperation, half-joy, and stumbled towards it as though angels were lifting her heels. _'He's here! He came!'_

It was a knight – a mailed, motionless figure that at first seemed to be carved out of black granite, grim and stern. But at Ammet's cry and hurried pace, the silhouette melted into anxious haste, very nearly rode Ammet down with the pace at which he urged on his mount, and then they met in a tumble of quick paced Arabic and a sudden , fervent embrace that spoke too plainly of the reason behind the mystery. Ammet was right. It wasn't just Sybilla and Mirrum who had secrets. Ammet had a secret too.

Not a Frankish secret. The face that looked up was that of a Saracen. A _well-favoured_ Saracen, Mirrum had to admit – with a touch of the instant assessment peculiar to women everywhere. Ammet's knight had a quick, intelligent face, with a mouth that seemed always about to smile through his beard. Although he had started suspiciously at the sight of a pale Frankish girl peering at Ammet over his shoulder, one hand flying to the hilt of his sword.

'_Who is –'_

'_I have told you of her, my lord,' _Ammet said breathlessly, staring at him. Mirrum almost wondered if there was a second meaning there. '_She is my ally and my friend. We discovered each other here at Ibelin, didn't we, Mirrum? She only guessed before. She came with me in good faith before we had to part... and I owe her a little truth.'_ Ammet turned her head to incline slightly on a steel-clad shoulder. A very slight motion, but it only wanted the flash of soft tenderness from the eyes of the knight to complete the picture. '_You see,_ _Mirrum... this is my intended. My future husband.'_

'_Your servant, mistress,' _the 'intended' interjected swiftly_. 'If Lord Imad can do aught to serve one who has been friend to his bride...'_

'I...well... I...' Mirrum faltered, her command of Arabic utterly lost. 'You're... you're of the Saracen army!'

'Indeed,' Imad said solemnly, in near perfect Norman French. There was an absurd riotous twinkle in one fine brown eye that suggested he found the situation amusing – as much in his own knight-errant gallantry as anything else. It was a gleam of self-mockery. 'I am both Syrian lord and rash lover when the mood takes me, so it would seem.'

'I must explain!' Ammet said eagerly.

The story came like sieved grains of sand. Ammet had chosen her honourable position of spy over a marriage chosen by her family – honourable enough, but she had not liked the making of it, and she had been stubborn as a colt. And Imad had been indifferent to the whole process, idly ready for a marriage, not particularly enthused as to his new bride, but amicable enough.

'Until I refused him,' Ammet said happily. 'He grew quite indignant then – fancied I was an insufferable little chit, to choose danger and death over something so trifling as a husband –'

'My estimation of you has not changed.' Imad remarked calmly. 'You are still an insufferable little chit –'

'Peace! Let me finish!'

Ammet's family had not been happy with her postponement; for the marriage was delayed a twelvemonth until she should have better served her allegiance. But they allowed her the breathing space. Indeed, when referred to Lord Salahuddin, he had proved strikingly content with the arrangement...

Something to do, no doubt, with the fact that Lord Imad used his trifling 'practical philosophy' to take a look at the girl who had so flatly refused marriage with him. He went – oh yes. Under pretence of protecting the caravan. He went disguised as a servant in her retinue to Jerusalem , and a trusted underling in embroidered robes befitting a Syrian lord. His companion made little headway, trapped as he was in the stiff formality of lord to maiden. But in the process his witty, handsome manservant made a great impression on the haughty girl, and by the end of it –

Well, Ammet had been saddened to think the wry, genial man with the fine laugh and the mocking eyes was gone forever, never to be thought of again. Only he returned, again, and again, and pleaded his Lord's suit with eyes so eloquent that Ammet was for a time made very miserable. She believed herself in love with a servant, after all. It was only when he discovered her torment that he eventually undeceived her. Helped her. Became a silent, devoted ally, determined not to let his bride be discovered as a spy.

It was how he had been tempted into 'experimentation' on the return journey with a certain Frankish baron, although Mirrum never heard that tale. It remained a closed book to her. But Ammet's tale – the very presence in the weak torchlight, the mailed rider, the darkness all seemed faintly unreal to Mirrum – a crazed fragment of dream, or a piece of a story like something strolling players might invent. It smacked not a little of the sort of 'romaunt' _jongleurs_ might well sing at banquet. Surely servants were not lords in disguise? How could she have _not_ known?

But she was bewildered, tired beyond measure, and perhaps she was not so alert as she might have been outside the dreamy air of Ibelin. She did no more than nod, dumbly, and look on with pleased eyes. Even Ammet seemed faintly unreal to her now – a character sang straight out of the romances of _Tristan and Iseult._

'I am glad you are happy,' she said, for want of anything else to say. 'Both of you. And – I ...'

She faltered, suddenly. A dreadful thought had loomed up out of the bewilderment that halted all congratulations.

'How is it you are _here?_' she said sharply. 'Ammet – you have not had _time_ to send word! There is no...'

Both faces looked gravely back at her.

'Well,' Ammet said slowly. 'I was rather... hoping that you might come with me. I go to my kinsman's house in Damascus – I do not hope to be wed until war is... done with.'

'But there is a truce –'

'Not now.' Imad said calmly. ' Yesterday perhaps, was different, but no longer. My Lord Salahuddin has crossed the Jordan. It was convenient for _me_ – I expected it. And thought it best to manage tonight.'

'We're at war?' Mirrum's heart lurched, horribly. War was a subject with which the chronicles had not spared detail. Vague scraps of old horrors floated in a whirl around her head, in no order.

'...**And in the sacking of Troy they left none alive...'**

'**...captured the women...'**

'**Put to the sword the townspeople, sparing none, amongst all their cries for mercy...'**

'**threw the infant son of Hector from the ramparts...'**

Mirrum had a sudden, sickening picture of little Prince Perseus's crumpled body flying through the air, Sybilla dragged shrieking away by her long dark hair. Her look of horror seemed to urge Ammet onwards.

'You could be my handmaiden!' she said coaxingly. 'See me wed – be friends! I'd see no harm came to you; you have helped me. You kept my secret. You'd be treated with kindness – I'd not meddle like Sybilla –'

'I care for Sybilla too!' Mirrum croaked.

'Bah! She's of Royal blood! Precious little happens to those who are worth something!' Ammet snorted. 'Reynaud of Chatillon's destroyed your old life for you – and mine. Come with me! You'd be safe – Mirrum, war is not kind to common women. Sybilla will go to _Kerak_, Mirrum – you're laid in the path of danger –

'So is Sybilla!'

'I care nothing for her! She discards waiting women like broken toys!' Ammet stopped, looked at Mirrum's tightly drawn face, and then changed tactics. 'She ruined any hopes you might have had of love, or marriage.' She said quietly. 'I know. I saw.'

Mirrum ducked her head to try and hide her expression with her cloud of hair, the lines growing tauter in her face. 'You didn't, Ammet.' She said, clutching a fistful of gown convulsively in one hand. 'You didn't see at all. And neither did Sybilla. But I don't hate her for it.'

'How-?'

'She didn't understand,' Mirrum said stoutly. 'Because she wasn't in love then. She didn't know how it was. And she's too lost. I couldn't _leave_ her, Ammet. I owe her loyalty. She's uncertain and careless sometimes, because she feels alone but – imagine if she were totally forsaken? I couldn't-' Mirrum's tone grew firmer. 'I won't. She made me what I am. I bide by her.'

'Even to death?'

'If – if that is what will happen, yes. I think I do,' Mirrum said thoughtfully. A few weeks ago she would have resented the idea.

Ammet looked mutinous. 'But –'

'Let alone,' Imad interposed quietly, looking at Mirrum's face. 'She has made her choice, and I respect you for your fealty, lady. I hope you live to profit by it.'

Mirrum bowed her head. 'I hope I do too, sirrah.'

Ammet was looking away, her shoulders heaving. Ammet had always seemed such a fierce, unapproachable person, Mirrum scarcely knew what to say; but she was suddenly very painfully certain Ammet was crying stubbornly into the horse's saddle-cloth.

'Ammet?'

'What?' Ammet said ungraciously. 'It's the wind, blowing dust in my eyes.'

'Say we can part-' Mirrum swallowed. '-as friends?'

For one long, breathless moment it seemed as though Ammet would not answer her. Then, as Mirrum sagged a little in mournful anticipation...

'Friends, you little goose? Of course we're friends!' Ammet turned with a forced smile that wobbled into a woebegone look as she gingerly patted Mirrum's thin shoulder. 'I just... hoped you might have come...'

She dried her eyes. 'There, I'm myself again!' she said fiercely, as though daring the silent lord to contradict her. Imad did not; merely glanced at her with a kindly, vaguely pitying look as he hauled her up into the saddle. 'Think of me, Mirrum. I'll pray for you –'

The horse, annoyed at being stationery so long, broke into a canter that sprayed desert dust into Mirrum's face with flying hooves. By the time she had wiped it from her face Ammet was no more than a retreating dot on the horizon, the faint sickly gleam of almost-dawnlight showing Ammet's lord.

They didn't look back.

Mirrum was left with the light. The rushes were charred almost to Mirrum's hand. Well, no matter – there was light enough to make her way back to Ibelin.

Sybilla.

Mirrum broke into a half-run. Kerak, battles, sieges – the ever present pathetic spectre of Prince Perseus caught up in some horror of battle. The sad fate of Astyanax in the _Iliad_ must have affected her more than she had thought. She must warn Sybilla! She must tell her –

Tell her what? A spiteful voice said in the recesses of Mirrum's brain. That you've helped an enemy of Jerusalem, that you're a _true_ traitor now? You think she'll look kindly on that? What other excuse would she believe, that you have so much knowledge? How else _will_ you explain Ammet's absence?

Mirrum fell over a jagged stone that had snagged her skirts and got up sobbing, knees scraped and bloodied. There was no warning she could give. Like Cassandra, she knew too much and could say too little. There was so little chance of going back to Jerusalem now. It would be too late...

'I can try,' Mirrum thought. She did not say it; it would have emerged as a desolate whimper, far too dispiriting. It had more power as a thought. I can but try...


	26. Chapter 26

The world is not such a different place. For all it spins dizzily from one heartbeat to another, moulding the way we see the world as though humans are no more than pliable lumps of clay – it remains the same.

Tiberias was weary of it. Exceedingly weary. It had all been so different, once. Oh, there had always been petty squabbling amongst the fiefdoms – he was a seasoned enough politician to take the knocks he knew were coming with a bold front and a swift return. But there wasn't time to breathe, time to _think_ in these strange, hot days, and the faces of men seemed angry now – and oddly twisted, when he looked at them, like some sneering carving of Judgement Day's demons. Tiberias had never truly thought of himself as a real soured misanthrope until now. It was a sad day when you were shamed to be one with your fellow men.

Mirrum would hardly have recognised the Lord Marshal in his present state. He was more gaunt of face than usual, if that were possible, for Tiberias had a certain leanness about him that suggested a wolf in midwinter in any case. Now he had a taut, wasted look about him that was almost that of a burnt carcase – as though he were bones over a thin knitting together of flesh. He was tired. But too tired, almost, to rest, for rest meant inactivity, thought... too much thought, on too many things, and Tiberias could not let himself think, for now, on anything other than the council of war...

Misfortune came thick and fast now to court. Generally, it has to be said, in the shape of Reynaud de Chatillon.

Tiberias found the thought had besieged him before he had time to be surprised by it, but he vaguely wondered what the pale child would have made of Reynaud. It would have been interesting to hear _her_ impression of him. He missed the games of old with Mirrum. They were space to rest and leave behind state, and she was an undemanding slip of a thing. Poor child...

Tiberias found himself almost dreaming on his feet as he shrugged on his cloak, his fingers fumbling a little, irritably. Leave that alone for now, man! Think of the present!

Bah, Reynaud was a firebrand braggart, no more – but a dangerous one. Oh, time had caught up with him at last – a pity it could not have been sooner. But as always, the old fox had been true to his name and craftily scuttled like a beetle away to his fortress at Kerak, leaving confusion and chaos behind him, and the grinning spectre of dissension. Ay, and Guy de Lusignan's smiling sneers. Guy had taken it into his head to play Devil's advocate at council of war, and he baited Tiberias unmercifully, his Templars gathered round him like a pack of hounds fawning at his feet. They had been wrangling over the same point for days now, wasting time that could have been spent in mending the cobweb-thin truce...

As yet there had been no move from Tiberias' liege lord. He had expected some sign, some decision – surely here, as always, the King would guide them out of the mire?

Perhaps he might. But not _yet_? The past two councils had been spent in a listless, half-amused watching of them all – as though it hardly mattered. Heraclius had been taken up eagerly by the Templars, shouted down by the other factions, been ignored by them all at some junctures – and into the bargain had severe strain put upon his patriarchal pride as some of the more energetic squires had shouted lewd remarks about Heraclius' mistress. And it had all been as some shadow-play or mummer's revels to _him_.

Yet the King of Jerusalem was not uninterested in the outcome...

Tiberias was at a loss, defeated, and uneasy. He _wanted_ surety, but he dared not ask at this juncture.

Oh, what did it signify? He sighed, and rose painfully from his seat, but he must have been careless – for he sent the little carved king tumbling from Mirrum's Hnefatatl board as he pulled his cloak about himself. It had been precariously perched on the table before him. Now it lay face half-upturned in a puddle of cooling candlewax, its features half-submerged.

Tiberias was no peddler of superstition, but he cast an uneasy look at the old heathen thing. It had almost a look of prophecy, a fallen king.

'I pray that is no ill omen...' he murmured, uneasily.

* * *

It was grey dawnlight by the time Mirrum dragged herself back to bed, throwing off her cloak and dusty boots. Nothing could be done about the slight brown smear of dried blood on her gown from her scraped legs. She would have to hope Sybilla didn't notice it...

There was a movement of rustling cloth. Mirrum froze, horrified, and then flung off her gown in a frenzy of haste, throwing it all crumpled to the bottom of the bed, and diving beneath the thin coverlet in a heart-thumping panic. How long had Sybilla been up? Had she been watching, waiting? Please let her not have seen her return alone! It was the worst counterfeit of sleep ever imagined, Mirrum quivering frightened beneath the blanket. And she was painfully conscious of it. He was no acting to save her as it had from Guy...

Blessedly Sybilla was in little condition to notice overmuch. It was a girl, rather than a woman, who entered, and she floated, rather than walked like an ordinary mortal; something to do, no doubt, with the somnambulist's air of dreamy motion. There was a half-awakened, wide-eyed look about her that seemed to have brought heightened colour into her pale cheeks. It was hard to credit of the proud, arch, panther-like creature of court with the fragility of this creature, but there was an odd rumpled humanity in Sybilla tonight. She held the folds of a sheet folded around her, the ends clutched about her.

And nothing else. Mirrum's cheeks flushed hotly with acute embarrassment. She tried not to think _of_ why. It made her feel quite hot and strange, and more than a little discomfited. Ammet would have been better at this sort of thing. But Ammet was not here.

It had never been much mentioned in religious texts. Jongleurs in ribald feasting songs tactfully gave it name as 'lover's play' – but it mentioned little more. Oh, _priests_ delighted in it – you could hardly sit at Mass and avoid the ravings about the Great Whore of Babylon. Uncertain days led to stern sermons. Thinking about it _now_, in the light of human experience, made her feel oddly frightened and at the same time a little queasily... _curious_.

What _was_ it about her mistress?

The kohl about Sybilla's eyes was smudged all about her face, her hair was thrown into the liveliest disarray about her shoulders – and yet she looked... most wondrous happy. She was bedraggled as any kitchen maid, but a thousand times happier in that natural state than she had ever been as an aloof queen. The glance she threw over Mirrum was almost timidly conspiring, as though they were all serving women to some other queen. Not her at all.

'I...' she began, a shy smile playing around her lips. 'I... well... I come to bed late, do I not?' Sybilla, to Mirrum's vague horror, giggled. It was a very un-Sybilla like sound. Where was the mother, the grave politician, the Lady Fortune who seemed to turn the chances of men upon her wheel?

Mirrum made a faint motion with her head that could have been yes, could have been no, and gave back a reflection of Sybilla's smile to her. It was a poor counterfeit of Sybilla's radiance.

But Sybilla paid it no heed she flopped joyously down on Ammet's empty bed with a creak of the wooden frame, the linen flying about her. Perhaps a little too freely.

'Madam!' Mirrum's cheeks flushed. 'You are not... not –'

'What? Oh.' Sybilla carelessly covered herself up again. 'My pardon, my poor _petit revenante_ – I was elsewhere. Paradise, perhaps...' she sighed, happily, turning her cheek to the pillow. 'I am quite sure it _is_ heresy, but I always found the Saracen description of Paradise much more pleasing than our own. They can love, can't they?' Sybilla sounded wistful. 'Whilst ours is one perpetual Mass –'

'You should not say that!'

'Why? It's true.' Sybilla yawned. 'One should... _love,_ in heaven. Love _is_ heaven. I cannot think why anyone would not...where is our own little Saracen? I am surprised I did not crush her where she lay?'

'Ammet is breathing the night air,' Mirrum said shortly, sitting up in bed. After all, it was not a lie. Ammet _was_ breathing the night air, somewhere. But not in Ibelin.

'Well, we can talk then...' Sybilla half-smiled at empty air, one hand reached out to brush mid-air as if perhaps imagining herself yet beside the Lord of Ibelin. 'I never wanted to speak of love before... tell me, does it always feel as though you are falling down a flight of stairs? They don't sing of it so well as I thought before now...'

Mirrum leant forward in curiosity. 'Is that how it feels?'

A small, spiteful voice in her head said _Yes, __**like**__ falling. Inevitably downwards_.

Sybilla rolled over onto her stomach, chin in hands, frowning a little – although not as if she resented the impertinence. She wanted to speak, Mirrum could see – Sybilla was half-drunk with something a good deal more potent than the harsh-edged wine of Ibelin. And it had loosened her tongue.

'Yes.' she said, as though trying to weigh her words. 'And no. In fact... I cannot tell, _Maryam. _I would I could describe it. It is...sad, in many ways, because there will never quite be a moment like it again. You throw your past and future into one place in the world, with one person, and once the die is cast...Yet_ wonderfully_, achingly happy...' Sybilla's smile was that strange, soft, vulnerable one again. 'Like burning without taking hurt.' She turned her face away a little to sigh between her fingertips. I never knew it before, Mirrum. My first husband, God rest him, I think was a little old for _that_ sort of love. He tried to make me happy without the least... idea... what I wanted...'

Mirrum nodded, by way of answer. Sybilla was not really talking to her – she was talking to herself again, in a reverie Mirrum would not be fool enough to interrupt. But Sybilla roused herself from it, with another uneasy look darted at the doorway.

'No Ammet yet? She takes the air a good while!'

Mirrum looked away. 'I-it grows light,' she said, looking at the thin sliver of daylight. 'Shall I dress you, my lady?'

'No. Leave it – _Ammet_ may dress me.' Sybilla had crimped her lips shut, wrapping the sheet more tightly about her with a petulant air. 'And I _shall_ reprove her for being so tardy when she returns...'

'My lady...'

'What?' Sybilla turned. 'Don't stand on form, Mirrum – you may call me what you please _here. _We share enough to hang us both, after all.'

Mirrum hung back miserably. 'I...I...'

'Well?'

'Ammet won't be coming back, my lady.' Mirrum lowered her eyes. 'She won't be coming back at all.'

'_What?!_'

Sybilla had risen angrily from her seat, fists clenched into knotted balls.

'Listen to me, my lady – please!' Mirrum was gabbling. 'Ammet has gone with-'

'Run like a thief in the night! And _you_ to tell me this?! She leaves _you_ to plead for her! Lady's Grace, is this _it_?'

'She did not wish to leave you-'

'Hah! I'll be bound!'

'No, she did not!' Mirrum protested earnestly. 'Indeed she did not! Madam, Ammet left for the only thing better than your service - that _she_ thought better for your service. She did not leave...alone.'

Sybilla's hand paused midway through a hasty moment that might well have been a blow. 'Not alone?'

'With a lover, my lady.' Mirrum said in a whisper, feeling numbly for the doorframe. This equivocation of the truth left her numbed and feeling oddly faint. 'She must have done it on a whim – I heard nothing of it till tonight, I swear to you. And I hardly knew how to say...'

'Yet she left you to face my anger?' Sybilla looked at Mirrum. 'Not the action of a friend. And hardly... why did you not go?'

This change of pace dizzied Mirrum. Sybilla's anger had dwindled into something almost like sad pity. 'Why?' she repeated stupidly. 'I... I do not understand...'

Sybilla looked oddly at her. 'I thought you hated me, petit revenante. I have not used you well, after all. I have brought you into scandal, shame, secrets. Tricked you into Jerusalem! And...' Sybilla looked down, fidgeting with a corner of the linen. 'I have some regret over what passed in Jerusalem ere we left. That was my doing.'

So she had felt guilty, after all...

Mirrum forced a cracked, falsely bright smile to her face. 'I think nothing of it, my lady –'

'Don't.' Sybilla said quietly. 'Don't call me "my lady." I...' she swallowed. 'Forgive me that I never asked about your-'

'Nothing to forgive.' Mirrum said quickly. 'Lady Sybilla, it's – it's nothing, it's gone. I forgave you before now –'

'No!' Sybilla was persistent as a terrier. 'I never asked. And now I know what love is... tell me, did you know your swain as I have knownBalian?'

'What? Oh no!' Mirrum looked terrified at the thought of it. 'No, I never...there was never... opportunity- that is, it was...'

'I baulked you of that?' Sybilla looked dazed. 'And you forgive me enough to remain by me?'

Mirrum would have given worlds for the conversation to draw to an end. She withdrew her eyes from her mistress standing ashen and appalled, and began to distractedly smooth the coverlet of her pallet bed.

'It is nothing,' she murmured. 'It's gone...'

Sybilla suddenly stepped forward to press Mirrum's shoulder.

'It can be remedied,' she said. 'When we return to Jerusalem. It can be remedied. I said I would find you a husband – I shall dower you off handsomely. I don't forget service rendered. It can all be undone, and your little apothecary can be yours again, I'm sure of it. Would you like that?'

Mirrum paused, hand frozen over the coverlet.

'I would like to ride for Jerusalem...'she said slowly.

'One less than when we started out, too...' Sybilla had already begun to chatter again. 'Well, we have stayed long – but I _may _make pilgrimage again,' Sybilla flashed a knowing eye at Mirrum, humming under her breath. 'I like Ibelin excellent well.'

* * *

Raymond of Tripoli watched the shadows on the wall of his apartments lengthen, slumped wearily in his chair with chin sunk upon his breast. It was seemingly a tranquil scene, to the observer who did not know the Lord of Tiberias well. To anyone who knew a little of his character , it was borne only out of a stunned dismay. There was a glazed, glassy look in his eye that made him look as if he had been felled by a cudgel from behind .

Tiberias would rather have been felled by a cudgel. He would rather have been trampled to death beneath the hooves of Guy's men than so cruelly trampled in spirit. It had been a savage jousting of words, accusation flying like splinters in men's faces – blasphemy, lies, heretic, lunacy. Treachery. Praise God for clear thought with his King. Tiberias, seeing the expressionless face turn slightly, one to the other, felt a twinge of pity; the sort he might feel were he _in extremis_ and seeing some cool seraphim listen to the wrangling of chittering lost souls. Until, at last, the blow struck.

Tiberias and his master both had expected it. Saladin was no fool, to waste opportunities, and he loathed Reynaud for a multitude of sins the old pirate had committed. Truce or not, Reynaud was a different matter.

But what Tiberias had not expected was what would be the next move. He had hoped – somewhat dispiritedly, but not without a jolt of triumph, that he would be given sway over Guy – perhaps entrusted with messages of persuasion, assuagement, to Lord Saladin _himself_. Certainly to lead the army. The King could scarce endure the travel under a blistering Eastern sun – hale and hearty men scarce survived it. For a man in his...condition...

Tiberias had encountered steel when he attempted, privately, to reason with his liege lord. Reason, cajole – even pleading with him. But no. Tiberias had been left for his pains with a tart _Modice fidei, quare dubitasti?_

The quotation from Scripture bit deeper than what Tiberias knew lay before him, like a great gulf. It would be over soon, then. And with it all of Tiberias' belief in the ways of God being merciful, or kind.


	27. Chapter 27

Sybilla was in fact better than her word. Despite her obvious reluctance to return to Jerusalem – for who would want to leave Ibelin? Ibelin, with its pleasant-faced lord and his listening silences and his quiet eyes, who was so very different from Guy de Lusignan.

It must be said, perhaps Sybilla's motives were not purely disinterestedly in repaying her loyal maidservant. Too long a stay would be suspicious, for all her husband spent as much time 'at Cana' as she did herself – he merely used other places as excuse. But he was by no means stupid, and if the breath of a whisper reached his ears...

Sybilla, however, was tactful. She let but two days pass in contentment before she announced her intention of returning to the citadel with her guard, and then - she was all briskness. Perhaps a little too much forced heartiness; she spoke more often with her eyes to the Baron of Ibelin. But to a casual observer she was a perfect model of propriety; the chaste, dutiful wife bound home again after a brief sojourn away from Palace life.

Mirrum spent the days Sybilla spent saying her goodbyes in a state of absent-minded obedience. It was odd; she had hardly thought of them in so long a space of time, but ... all the while she was mechanically employed in the necessities of travel, she thought of Dame Juliana. Her old mistress' insistence on speed, the way cotte and gown had been crumpled - poor maltreated things! – Into nothing more than tight, sadly crumpled sausages of worn cloth which wilted in the heat like dead petals all the way to Jerusalem. The way Iveta used to draw her girdle so tight it puckered her gown, making her look like a gibbeted criminal rather than a lady of means. And the Dame used to pinch her daughter's cheeks to make the blood flow more readily, too – small, sad gestures from the armoury of anxious womanhood. It used to shame Mirrum, their clucking insistence on pushing their way in to where they were not wanted. Now it vaguely made her want to cry for pity. They might have done better to stop the pretence...

Her eyes prickled a little. Under a little pretending of her own, Mirrum decided it was the wind, and turned to survey the room – splintered, bare after all Sybilla's finery had been plucked from the room. There was no hint of a woman's presence in the solar of the Lord of Ibelin. It had a desolate, forgotten look...

Something silver caught Mirrum's eye. Ah. One last thing, then.

Sybilla had carelessly abandoned her looking glass. That had to be packed carefully; it was a delicate sliver of a thing, smooth as a soap bubble, and made of a burnished silver that made everything kinder when you looked into it. Mirrum had left it until last so it would not be crushed beneath the weight of the saddlerolls...

Mirrum did not normally look at her reflection – well, not out of any personal vanity, or even any curiosity about herself. She avoided comparison. She had always been a watery, sickly pale thing anyway, the dull as ditchwater byre girl – not quick and dark-haired like Ammet. Ammet had woken inevitable comparisons, being so quick and pretty in her pert way. Iveta had been a Saxon maiden of the golden and pink type – fair hair, cheeks like a doll; although tempered with a certain slackness in the chin that had hinted at one day turning into her mother's face

And Sybilla... after all, Sybilla was too beautiful to compete with. There was no purpose in trying to find beauty in a frowsy child.

But something – perhaps borne out of the moment, made Mirrum look now, trying to find it. Because the reflection _now_ was different from the Mirrum of the days of Dame Juliana. There was a sharp difference. Mirrum's face had been almost wizened from hard travel and little to eat. It was still a little pinched – but pinched was Mirrum's natural state, where a mocking Nature had given her such a pointed chin. It made her look all eyes and nose, even with the softening effect of the silvered glass – something of Sybilla's melancholy tamarind monkey look...

Mirrum laid it down, absently, and then picked it up again with a muffled curse, snatching up her cloak. Sybilla would be waiting for her.

It is odd, in retrospect, that Mirrum had no inkling of the storm coming. She knew the clouds gathered, yes – but she thought it something only to do a few brief, horrifying scraps of old tales. Violent death had not approached the narrow monastic confines of Mirrum's life. It was a nightmare from an unkindly world, not party to her own. She even felt relieved. There would be a new sort of order once they returned; more danger, since Ammet was nothing more than an empty place. But it would be Jerusalem, and Mirrum was too used to it to want anything to change...

Amalric clucked familiarly to the horse as she mounted. Time had not improved Mirrum's horsemanship, and it showed all too painfully as she nervously eyed her mount.

'This is no beast for you, ja?' Amalric said easily, a wry twinkle in one eye betraying his humour. 'Which one of you leads? You... or the horse?'

'The horse,' Mirrum said briefly. 'Generally.'

'It is too spirited a beast; beware of that, mistress,' Amalric was suddenly all concern. 'If the horse bolts and you cannot control him-'

'It's never happened yet.'

'Ah – I see. You ride a spirited horse because your mistress likes them so...'Amalric looked towards Sybilla, a quiet orange-cloaked figure a few paces ahead. She had bound her head in a green love-knot again; the severity of the turban making her face look wan. Her features, lovely as a saints' painted tears, were inclined downwards, towards –

Amalric looked tactfully away from his liege lord, his eyes flicking sideways to Mirrum. 'My Lord Balian would seem to have learnt much at Court,' he said neutrally. With his peculiar Teutonic intonation it became a flat, carven stone sort of statement; without irony or mockery. Merely what was.

'I think I am more of a mule horsewoman myself,' Mirrum said gloomily, surveying the landscape from the perilous height of her mount's back. She smiled. 'Until we return to Ibelin, then?'

'_Ja_. I am sure you and the Lady Sybilla will return... again...' Amalric's brow furrowed, suddenly. 'How now – what shows here?

There was a cloud of dust on the beaten path – zigzagging erratically between the scrubby vegetation, the startled villagers – before emerging as a sweat-lathered horse and rider, the horse frothing at the mouth, eyes wild , bloodshot –

Its flanks were dappled with blood. The rider swayed dizzily in the saddle, eyes focusing blearily on Amalric- who had darted forward from Mirrum's bridle with a muffled curse to seize hold of the reins.

'My Lord Balian?' he said, thickly – and then drooped forward over Amalric's shoulders like a rag doll, fingers stiffened. He had ridden so hard that his hands still clutched at invisible reins.

_So. _A small, spiteful part of Mirrum spoke from her mind. _You knew. You could have prevented it, if you'd spoken out. Traitor. It's death rather than forgery now on your conscience, if you have one._

Mirrum's stomach lurched, horribly, and for a moment she feared the sky had leapt from above to do a somersault about her – until she recovered her senses and took a death-grip upon the reins. Sickened though she might feel, Mirrum would rather be damned than faint at sights such as this. It was the sort of mewling lady's trick Iveta might have pulled. Besides, there were trembling lines at the corners of Sybilla's mouth that showed her mistress was reining in her own emotions to be a queen rather than simply a woman.

'What news?'

Amalric raised his head from the wounded man flopping like a dead fish between a half-dozen men-at-arms. 'The King marches on Kerak, my lord. To intercept Salahuddin at the –'

Everything exploded into confusion, after that. There was a shocked indrawn breath from Sybilla – but she was not heeded. Women were not given attention in a time of war. Besides, they were all carried forward with the tide of energy that swirled about Lord Balian. He showed his mettle; he had merely nodded, quietly, as though to say 'Yes' – and was already rapping out terse orders as though he were some battle-hardened warlord. Mirrum and Sybilla were both all but forgotten in the swirl of current events.

'That is impossble,' Sybilla pronounced calmly, her gloved fingers twisting the reins into tight knots between her hands. But for that, she would have appeared quite icily calm. 'My brother _cannot _march on Kerak.'

'Yes, my lady.' Mirrum said in a small voice.

'Doubtless it is Tiberias – mayhap my husband –'

'Perhaps it could be my lord of Tripoli, my lady?'

'But he spoke... the _King_, marching on Kerak...' Sybilla closed her eyes as though in distress, raising her hands to her temples. 'Lord of Hosts, will it never end? Is he so reckless? This is _not_ Montgisard....'

Sybilla raised her eyes to stare blankly at the horizon. 'Montgisard was a great victory, _petite revenante._ A long time ago. My brother was... stronger, then. I will not say _well_, but... better than he is now. He won great glory against Salahuddin - by courage and strength of arms, they say. I say that all war is a matter of chance. He was fortunate, that day. To risk such a thing _twice_....' She ended with a faint choking gasp. 'This will not end well...'

'W- will the army reach us?'

'What? Oh no.' Sybilla said, in a hard, matter-of-fact way. ' He cannot possibly reach Kerak before Salahuddin.'

Mirrum's voice would have seemed faint for a mouse. 'What becomes of _us_, my lady?' she said, forlornly. 'I... I never read of war but in old Greek tales. I do not know what to do –'

'We _wait,'_ Sybilla flashed, over her shoulder. 'We wait, and we hope, and whatever way it ends – we meet it with as much dignity as though we are mailclad paladins ourselves, you understand?' Sybilla looked back towards Ibelin, to where the shine of lord Balian's mail coat told her where he was. He was mounting his horse...

Sybilla abstractedly hummed a snatch of the Chanson de Roland under her breath. It was an old ballad – a little piece of much her own lady-mother had sang to her at her knee. But looking at the determined face of her lord, the quiet, steadfast dark eyes...

' "_Franks in their band a thousand score remain,__ No fear have these, death hold they in disdain." '_ Sybilla hummed it almost frantically. 'Sing with me, petite revenante, sing with me!_"No fear have these..." '_

'...I..._ "death hold they in d-disdain."' _Mirrum tried to bravely bear out the tune- but her high, reedy voice made the tune quiver like a bird flying startled at a sudden noise.

There would be no joy in the journey today.

* * *

It should have been an easy, ambling travel, taking slow steps along the way. But now they rode grimly side-by-side with Ibelin's scanty handful of fighting men – remnants of men-at-arms, a few old practiced fighters like Amalric – who still nodded and smiled, briefly, as though he were merely riding out on a hunting excursion.

Mirrum wondered his smile was not thinner, less amicable. And then, little by little, as the punishing pace increased, there was no time to notice anything. Mirrum's horse moved with the others as dutifully as though it were a little wooden puppet Prince Perseus had pushed across a sandy floor...

'Stop!'

Their train slowed at Balian's cry of command. He was staring at a thin – a very thin , but slowly increasing – trail of dustclouds along the horizon. It was almost lazy in the way it span itself upon the skyline.

'Cavalry,' Balian said briefly.

'My Lord –'

Mirrum clung, trembling, to her horse's neck and said nothing. Sybilla's hand was openly on Balian's sleeve before the whole troop of his men. Open, blatant.

But then, Mirrum thought with a sinking of her heart, it would not matter for much longer. The dustcloud was growing longer – shining, little pinpricks of light that glinted on the boss of a shield, the shape of a Syrian paynim's casque...

Balian's gaze faltered, for a moment; looking at Sybilla's eyes. But only for a moment – as a night moth might flap its wings whilst resting against a lighted windowpane.

'Go,' he said, shortly. 'Inside Kerak. Go.'

Sybilla for once required no urging. Stiffly taking the reins of Mirrum's horse, she wordlessly urged her own courser forwards, dragging Mirrum helplessly in the wake of the dust kicked up by flying hooves. The Princess' face was tilted forwards over her horse's neck, eyes set firmly forwards.

She did not look back once.

Kerak was a stout stronghold; a firm clenched fist of stone seated on a rocky hill, defiant thumbprints of lookout posts and towers set defensively against an endless blue sky. The battlements were already crowded with nervous white-garbed Templars; the common sort, linked anxiously together by spears and fingers over half-drawn swords.

'Visitors!' A huge, booming voice yelled with drunken affection downwards. 'Let the feasting begin, ay?'

Sybilla barely stopped the long-limbed gait or her horse to move from their way or hear the summons from above.

'Is... is mi-lord... Guy h-here?' Mirrum's speech was all breathless and jolted together as she struggled for breath. Her sarcenet cloak had fallen askew over her face.

'I neither know nor care,' Sybilla said, with icy face. 'He may go to the Devil as he pleases – but I'll wager he is not here to reap the trouble this day. Besides, I must give you fair warning – we sup with the Devil today anyway.'

'M-my lady?'

Sybilla dismounted briskly, disentangling her cloak . 'Come, _petite revenante_ – before you fall from your horse. 'Have you not heard of Reynaud de Chatillon?'

Mirrum span, still dizzied by her own cloak. 'I have – yes, I think I have heard of him...' She faltered, uncertain. 'He – he has been in many battles, has he not? May – mayhap his experience will prevent the Saracens from prevailing!'

Sybilla snorted. 'What? You have heard of Reynaud de Chatillon, I trust? Who do you mistake him for? Surely Tiberias has mentioned the goat-.' Sybilla suddenly spread her own cloak about Mirrum's shoulders in an unusually maternal movement. There was a breath of the familiar scent of musk and amber as the cloak rustled.

'You have to need to fear for the moment. You are under my protection.' Sybilla said quietly, bringing her face close to Mirrum. 'Whatever happens, you have my word I shall not see you harmed. By the Saracens or –' Sybilla shuddered, politely. 'Reynaud. I suppose we must see the old satyr. Now he brings us to this.'

* * *

Now, say twenty – maybe thirty years ago – Reynaud de Chatillon was a fine figure of a man. It was the old days – the days of bloodlust, savagery, swift death on both sides, and through it all – the chronicles, the tales amongst the common folk – Reynaud de Chatillon rode on crimson wings like an avenging angel, fiery hair ablaze with righteous vengeance. Or so it had seemed, then. Tiberias had always despised the man for a lusty libertine with an arrogance worthy of Lucifer himself.

But then, like Lucifer, Reynaud had over-reached himself, and fallen. Years went by with no word from him – in captivity with the old enemy, until an ill-stroke of luck brought him back to Jerusalem after a convenient exchange of prisoners.

It might almost have been worth the coffers of Jerusalem to let Reynaud lie. Captivity had soured him, made him a snuffling sin-raddled old pirate with gold on his mind and endless grievances on his lips.

It was certainly illuminating, seeing him in his stronghold.

Mirrum had only heard from books and rumour (for Tiberias had never talked of the Lord de Chatillon) of the man now stumbling drunkenly before them like a great ape. She had imagined some well-hewn lord in the mode of the barons of Court.

Reynaud clearly thought of himself that way. His hair was grown long – more to preserve the faint traces of red out of vanity, and his beard was cut in a grotesque parody of Guy de Lusignan's – as though he were vying like an overstuffed partridge to take his place amongst the peacocks. From the ripple of solid muscle at his bull-like neck Mirrum guessed he was a formidable opponent on the battlefield, even if it was now running sadly to seed. But instead of being in armour, the Lord of Kerak was gaudily tricked out in Damascene cloth – a bright orange silk robe that was ill with his own fading locks. A fat stomach protruded sneakingly from the robe, two cloth-of-gold slippers jeering at the illusion of grandeur their owner tried to reproduce.

'Spoils of war, my lord?' Sybilla said sourly, with as much cool courtesy as she dared. 'You pay a fine price for it.'

Reynaud stopped, wine trickling down through his beard as he took a reckless pull of wine, and then bared his teeth in a rictus of a grin. 'Little tricks from the heathen caravans,' he said with relish. 'Pretty little baubles they make, eh? Should stick to it, 'stead of war-making. Better at it, ha!'

'Indeed, my lord,' Sybilla said with thinning lips. 'War-making is something you do excellent well yourself.'

'Tha'ss me!' Reynaud stretched his neck out to leer at Mirrum, hitherto unnoticed in the general frosty exchange of greeting. Sybilla made him uncomfortable. He was never entirely sure whether she was mocking him or not. 'What, brought company?'

Mirrum knew the meaning of Sybilla's protective arm on her shoulder now.

'Not for _you_.' Sybilla said coldly. 'We'll all be dead, anyway... That is, we...'

She took a few eager steps forward, placing her hands on the parapet of the tower with a hungry earnestness as she stared out at the great dusty plain before Kerak. Only a small half-circle of dust showed where Balian and his handful of men were – that, amid the few pin-pricks of frightened village people and –

That ominous line of dust. The cavalry. The end.

'Eh?' Reynaud turned his attention to the horizon too. 'What do you look at? Nothing out there – 'cept a fool and his fodder for Saladin.'

'I see a knight,' Sybilla answered. Vaguely, as though her mind were out on the plain, rather than locked up here beside the ruin of her brother's kingdom. 'His men...'

Mirrum hardly knew how to console - she was still awestruck by Sybilla, as one might hold lightning in reverence. It was too apt to strike for there to be any familiar terms. But she timidly ventured to quietly tug a corner of her mistress' cloak, and venture a wavering smile as the Princess turned.

' "_No fear have these, death hold they in disdain."' _She said timidly.

Sybilla's look nearly floored Mirrum in terror, lest she should have gone too far – but Sybilla pressed Mirrum's hand in a gesture that could only be described as – gratitude.

'You speak true, _petite revenante._' She shivered. 'I do not know what the end will be, but – '

Together they stood and watched worlds shiver to pieces.


	28. Chapter 28

Mirrum had always supposed war to be a grand, dark, terrifying thing in the Holy Land. Palestine's wars were _surely_ different than the grubby dishonourable burning of thatch and cotte in England, the petty squabbles of quarrelling barons. All war in England could amount to was a sour sort of victory. Charred sticks and lumps of dead flesh were the rewards of victory. That was all.

But here! The Holy Land! Mirrum had seen it in her mind's eye as something great and terrible, The great war with Heaven fought over again, with stern and awe-inspiring leaders on both sides locked in honourable, deadly, dangerous, _beautiful_ conflict...

If Mirrum had cared to examine her impressions of holy war and battle more carefully, she would have found, at its root, an early memory of a wall painting in the small church in the fenlands of the north. It was a million miles away from the heat and dust of Palestine. The artist had been some unknown, the painting crudely done in bright, garish daubs that would be sneered at in the austerity of Jerusalem. But Mirrum had been enchanted by the depiction of Lucifer battling the forces of Heaven. The artist had not sought to make the demons grinning scaly things – this was still a bitter fray between creatures of heaven, angel against angel, and what had terrified Mirrum was the fact that their faces were all the _same_. The pitiless beauty of the archangels had been _not_ _so very different_ from the proud defiance of the Lord of Flies.

But where in Palestine was the grace of battle? The carefully depicted subtlety of struggle? It was nothing but a little tumble of dust on a deserted plain – a wide circle of kicked-up earth closing in on a desperate little tumbling patch of other dust.

Mirrum thought, with bitter cynicism which would not have been unworthy of Tiberias himself, of herself on the road to Jerusalem. Even the dust must have known Christ...

And all men could think of doing was die in it, like ants. And the only likeness there was to the tumble of dust was that from this distance, at this height, you could see no difference between Saracen and Frank as they fought and bled into fly-blown, stinking sand...

The ring of what might, perhaps, be the Saracen force closed into a glittering circle in the sunlight.

'Hah! Told you so!' Reynaud de Chatillon surged greedily forward, still clutching a wine cup in one hand. A dribble of red wine spilt upon the stone parapet as he leaned forward. 'Little fool, eh! To die outnumbered, for nothing!'

Sybilla turned her head slightly. 'Nothing?' Her eyes seemed to be horribly fixed on the spilt wine; it was so very deep a red. Mirrum could almost follow her train of thought as Sybilla looked up, stricken, at the tussle upon the plain of Kerak, and clasped a hand over her mouth to suppress the low wail that threatened to rise there.

'Nothing?'

There was some, little, feeble activity below. Mirrum could not tear her eyes away. It looked like little more than the tussle of little boys in the dust from here – there was no beautiful moment captured mid-battle by an artist who had never seen war. There were crushed things lying like twitching insects, the ringing scream of a dying horse –

Something reached out and slapped her face. The sudden impact barely hurt, but the shock of it broke the sickening spell of the moment.

'Don't look, Mirrum –' Sybilla's face was set hard as steel.

'But-'

'You want to _watch_ men die?' Sybilla had drawn blood to her underlip from biting it so hard. 'We are all going to die, but...there are men drawn down into Death as we look on. To watch that is...cruel.' Sybilla bent her head. '_In paradisum deducant te Angeli:__in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres,__et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem__..._' Sybilla had suddenly begun to murmur a snatch of the Requiem under her breath, her hands twitching as though she told an invisible rosary.

Mirrum's insides went cold. On Sybilla's lips that part of the Requiem Mass had a more desperate meaning. She wasn't praying for Lord Balian's reception into heaven. She was desperately pleading with her Maker for the Baron's life, for a return to the earthly city of Jerusalem rather than the holy city of Heaven. It was an imperious commanding of God to intercede now, with some miraculous intervention, some –

'Sweet Jesu!'

Mirrum blinked water from her overstrained eyes and tried to focus – not on the ominously quietened melee on the plain, but on the wavering horizon between sky and sand, the heat-mist forming a shimmering barrier to sight. Yet something had...shone – almost as Mirrum had thought of miracles...

Angels, Mirrum thought dizzily, angels – and I had stopped believing in Jerusalem as a sacred city here on Earth. And after all it proves me wrong...

'God heard you, my lady!' Mirrum, in her excitement suddenly turned shrill with shocked disbelief. 'It is the holy army of Saint George come to intercede in the battle-'

Sybilla stopped, sharply. 'What?'

'Look on the horizon, lady! Something shines, the banner of Heaven –'

Reynaud de Chatillon (although he snorted at the rising note of jubilation in the serving maid's voice) also took a furtive look at the horizon. 'Saint George!' he snorted, after a few moments glaring at the view. 'Hah! You've a diseased view of heaven – t'is naught but the leper –'

Fortunately the Lord de Chatillon hastily recollected present company. It was as well he did; Sybilla had turned, white-lipped and staring, to look at him with stony eyes. But she turned her eyes to the shimmering line of silver forming on the horizon with a look of wavering hope.

'My brother,' she said simply. And that was all – no praise, no censure. 'That perhaps is as well – see the colours there? You overlook Salahuddin, little ghost.'

Salahuddin's banners were a stark contrast to the strange glitter on the horizon. In place of that the great lords of Egypt and Syria bore hot red and deep green standards looped with the graceful swirls of inscrutable Arabic script. When you looked at the two greater parts of the war host...

Mirrum could again see the war against Heaven. Each beautiful in their own way, and who was to say which had the better ground?

The thought of watching those ponderous, clumsy things called armies, made up of so many thousands upon thousands of single men...

'Will they fight?' Mirrum said queasily.

'Fight?' Sybilla looked surreptitiously over her head for Reynaud de Chatillon – but he had retreated within his garish silk pavilion to pour himself more wine. He paid them no attention. 'Not if there can be reason first, I hope. Salahuddin is a wise man – and he has dealt generously with my brother... before...' Sybilla's voice was doubtful.

Mirrum peered at the war host. A single, minute speck of white had trotted out from the serried ranks as the soldiers slowly drew to a halt.

Sybilla's hands gripped the stone parapet with a convulsive, involuntary gesture, before turning her head away.

'That is he,' she said abruptly. 'And there, look to the right – Salahuddin. He sits his horse well, don't you think? A noble adversary and a worthy opponent... you do not look at Lord Salahuddin, Mirrum. He is there –'

'I see him.' Mirrum said absently, staring earnestly at the plain below. 'It is just... I have never seen a king before, my lady.'

Sybilla twitched a trailing corner of her headdress. 'I have seen many in my family.' She said quietly. 'They are men like any other. Does Tiberias... talk of my brother to you?'

Mirrum turned her pale face slightly, tilting it so a cloud of frowsy pale hair fell forward over her brow. 'Seldom...'

'Ah!' A breathy sigh from Sybilla.

Mirrum said nothing, but now she looked with renewed interest - a slight, fluttering turn of interest, for it had come upon her that this was the _Physician's_ lord and master that rode free from his retinue across the plain – that she saw two kings, almost the same size as Prince Perseus' toy soldiers, and they gazed calmly at each other as though across a chequered board of flat patterned kingdoms...

'Yes,' Sybilla said, as if in answer to her unvoiced question. 'It is something to look upon a parley like that, isn't it? You may tell your grandchildren of it.'

She could see more clearly now, for all her watering eyes. The figure of the King of Jerusalem looked slighter than she had imagined. Kings, whether whole or blighted, existed in Mirrum's fancy as powerfully built and broad-shouldered, men in the last prime fire of life. Older. Wiser. Stronger. It was foolish now – after all Sybilla was a winter older than her brother, wasn't she? You could see something of the slenderness of youth in the dim blue-clad figure's carriage. Yet... there was none of the _energy_ of youth. There was a strained weariness to the King in the saddle; a lethargy kept tightly reined back. He kept struggling to hold up his head with sharp gestures as though he could scarcely move but for effort of will...

Mirrum was disappointed that she could not see his face. From this distance there would have been little enough to see, but the sun's reflection in what seemed to be... a casque? It obscured her view. She would have liked to see if there were still any resemblance to Sybilla...

Mirrum scarcely had time to take in Salahuddin, a wary, powerful man who was every inch the king of imagination. But whatever exchange had occurred between kings, it must have been brief. In a moment all was busy activity – the pale figure spurred suddenly into a canter, the dark splash of colour that was the Lord Salahuddin bursting into a backward gallop that let the great millipede war host away from Kerak...

A small botch of white and blue detached itself from the body of the war host and rode resignedly after their liege lord.

'Tiberias.' Sybilla said mechanically. 'Doubtless my husband; it would not be well for him to be far from my brother. I expected him to come, even if he rides in the company of servants and common apothecaries –'

The word jolted Mirrum – not into words but into a single, stricken look.

Sybilla still looked outward. 'Perhaps the Lord of Ibelin still lives...'

'Will the ... the physicians be with the war host?'

'Almost certainly. This will have taxed him beyond his – Why, _Mirrum_! What foolishness do you think you –'

'I must go down!'

'There is _no_ need! Mirrum –'

But Mirrum had sprung, without knowing quite what she did, from Sybilla's outstretched hand, fleeing madly towards the stairs. Reynaud had unaccountably sidled away from the parapet, his boisterous exclamations wheezing into nothings. The only thing he seemed quite sure of now was his name. Mirrum could him as she ran, below her on the stairs.

'I am Reynaud de Chatillon!'

Oh _Physician_, Mirrum thought desperately. Why did you come? I have gone mad, I think...But she didn't stop running. He might have succumbed in the desert – heat exhaustion killed more men than battles before the fighting ground was even gained. He might have been injured – although there had been no fighting, but Mirrum's brain took on fever pitch. Why must only Sybilla be allowed to care for what she loved? Why could she not see him? If only to know he saw her, and she saw him – perhaps to **see** him!

'I am Reynaud de Chatillon!'

Alas, Mirrum's breath betrayed her before she could gain the second staircase. She had to clasp at a narrow window-ledge, gasping for breath as the pain in her sides eased and the blood pounding in her ears began to slow. She could not even see the courtyard below properly, to see if she could spy him out – it was a mere crazy whirl of colour...

'Mirrum!'

And Sybilla had caught up with her. She could hear her calling as she descended the stairs, her skirts rustling a little way above her. 'Mirrum! Wait! Not _yet_! Not _now_!'

'I –' Mirrum made a foolish effort to stagger on to the next set of steps before Sybilla's hand bit down on her arm, making her prisoner.

'Listen to me, you little _fool,_' Sybilla said with soft vehemence. 'You may think _me_ a love-sick cuckolder of husbands, but even_ I_ can see the folly in _this. Wait! _Reynaud de Chatillon goes out thereto fawn – he has nearly caused war! My brother will not be merciful to such a...worm. _Your _timing could not be more ill-chosen! Wait! And give me the view of the window, too,' Sybilla added plaintively, thawing a little.

'But he might be –'

'You forget,' Sybilla said from the window, which she had somehow taken up by gently elbowing Mirrum out of the way. 'I am like you. Only the man _I_ care for has been in the thick of the fighting, before the war-host came and with nothing more than his duty to aid him. _He_ could very well be dead, or wounded unto death. Does _your_ attachment stand up to such scrutiny?'

Mirrum held a grudging silence.

'I thought so. Hmm...We should, perhaps, go down.' There was a note of satisfaction in Sybilla's voice. 'But _slowly._ Reynaud will reap his tares in good time. My brother has _always_ loathed him. '

* * *

In many ways what passed when they reached the courtyard was little short of a waking dream for Mirrum. It had a nightmarish, surreal quality to it – the ranks of soldiers lined up in sheepish, hushed silence, lines of white-robed attendants and...

Mirrum, although hotly aware of their own prominence in the crowd, could not resist standing on tiptoe to get a better look at the discreet apothecary's assistants lining the walls. There were four of them, almost alike – grave, with lowered eyes. Mirrum couldn't tell if any one of them looked her way or not...

Prominent in the crowd – almost at the King's side, was Lord Tiberias. But this was not the moment to look to him for acknowledgement. Mirrum felt pained merely _looking_ at him. She knew Tiberias cared much for his king, but the Lord of Tripoli looked like a man who has walked over the Megiddo Plains of Hell barefoot, and from the involuntary way he would start forward, he had spent the day in nearly as much agony as his liege lord.

Guy de Lusignan, to nearly everyone's surprise, was also standing smartly at the King's side, with the air of an uneasy schoolboy expecting a whipping, but not daring to appear slack or slow of wit. He scarcely looked pleased to see his wife present – the moment, after all, was one of humiliation - but then Sybilla's gaze swept clean through him as though he were empty air. Deliberately seeing nothing at all.

It was odd to reflect later that the little things in the greater drama playing out before them all caught her eyes first before she looked at the King.

But the deceiving shine of sunlight on the battlefield had not been from a helmet casque. It was not possible to see if he resembled Sybilla at all – save perhaps in height. Close to he was perhaps half a head taller than Tiberias. There was still present, even in his cloaked form, the faintly angular lines of youth.

Mirrum hadn't quite known what to expect. She did not know the sickness, after all – she still entertained a half-hearted belief in a flaxen-haired Fisher King, young and beautiful.

The face before her _was_ beautiful. It was the gentle effigy of a Greek god, chiselled into painstaking neutrality, the sharp lines of the metal mask beautifully, perfectly symmetrical. The face of a second Apollo in repose.

Except for the eyes. Had it not been for the eyes within the mask, the moment would not have tasted sour like lead. The air felt thick and sluggish with tension. For the eyes were hard, like pebbles, and rested with absolute disgust upon the grovelling form of the Lord de Chatillon.

The young King might look like an Apollo, but it was an Apollo whose ire was roused into righteous fury. Mirrum kept her eyes lowered, her hands pressed meekly together. She knew nothing of the public humiliation of nobles.

A stinging exchange followed. Reynaud was desperately trying to conciliate with honeyed words, with flattery, making his plump bulk writhe in acute self-abasement in the dirt...

'Lord have mercy!' Almost as one, the crowd winced.

Had it been any other king, the gesture would have been powerful enough; reducing the proudest of his lords to servile vassalage with the old oath of fealty. But in _this_ king it became more than that; it showed Reynaud de Chatillon to the world as a craven coward as he stooped to submission – by not sparing him. By taking a grim delight in the look of horror freezing on the corpulent knight's face as he snatched off a gauntlet, presenting a maimed hand to the world – For Reynaud to make the token gesture of acceptance.

Tiberias shut his eyes. Not against his lord, but against the ripple of horror passing through the crowd like a murmuring sea – and the way that Tiberias could see, if the others could not, that the King rocked slightly on his feet like a tree twisted by the wind.

Reynaud, to give him credit, hesitated only a moment in thinly disguised repulsion before he threw himself cringingly at his overlord ...

There was nothing worse than the noise that followed. It was worse than the blow, that sound – no, not the sound, the _slice_ of air hastily giving way as the riding crop whipped into Reynaud's face. The King had not given ground in his icy silence, but the controlled anger was suddenly loosed into the riding crop as though it were a weapon of vengeance, until Reynaud rolled towards the ground with bloodied cheeks.

The mask, with its quiet, tranquil expression turned slightly – almost in confusion, as though it had thought this far only to wonder what came next. He wandered, almost in a dream, away from the disgraced De Chatillon, took a step towards Tiberias – and then somehow his foot turned beneath him and he stumbled to his knees.

'Guard!' Tiberias had darted forward almost as the King fell, his voice a hoarse cracked scream. He had braced himself, but he struggled to bear a semi-conscious weight alone. 'For Jesu's sake, help him...'

Mirrum would have involuntarily started forwards but for Sybilla's hand on her arm. It held her back, stiff as a jointed doll.

'Madam?'

'No...'

'Shall we go down to the retinue, my lady?' Mirrum prompted, after Sybilla remained unaccountably stiff and silent. Mirrum was still trembling, for the swift violence of the moment had frightened her almost more than the thought of war. But the piteous spectacle before her keenly awoke her pity for Tiberias' master. 'To the King-?'

'No!' Sybilla said in a harsh whisper, recoiling as though from a serpent. 'No, let him alone!'

Mirrum's look of puzzlement turned to aghast dismay. 'But, madam –'

'There are _others_ to help him,' Sybilla said forbiddingly. 'See?' Two shamefaced Templar knights had leapt out of their stunned silence to sheepishly aid the Lord Marshal.

'But madam, the _King_...'

Surely the Physician would have helped? He would not have hung back. Inwardly Mirrum's insides curdled with disappointment. He was not here. Or else he was not the kindly creature she thought he was.

'You may go and ask the Lord Marshal that the Lady Sybilla requests to know how her brother fares,' Sybilla said, not meeting Mirrum's gaze. 'But I... cannot go down there. I a –am sorry, I...'

She pushed Mirrum gently onwards. 'Go, since you want it so.'

Mirrum walked (unsteadily, now it came to it), down the broad stone path to the courtyard, stones crunching underfoot, and feeling as though she trod on eggshells. This was a frightening world. All was business now; Reynaud de Chatillon gaping and pinioned between two stout men-at-arms, a confusion of horsemen milling about in preparation. The war-host was leaving. The long, painful journey back to Jerusalem must be begun. It buzzed with purpose that was not her place. Perhaps this was what Sybilla meant. But... why did she seem to _hate_...?

Mirrum darted out of the path of a cantering horse and stood uneasily in the shadow of the keep, a forgotten wraith in faded green and a crumpled red hood whom nobody noticed. There was no place for her here. She was in the way. Perhaps she should simply return to Sybilla and be a waiting lady rather than a nuisance...

'God places us all here, then, pale child?' A voice said, from just behind Mirrum's left shoulder, in the familiar tones of Raymond of Tripoli. 'At this God-forsaken place...'

It was a distant shadow of his playful banter of old; there was a bleak note of desolation in it that it had never possessed before. The old light in Tiberias' quick eye was quite extinguished, dwindled to a dreary vacancy in the heat of mid-day, and he clutched the reins of his horse with a listless air. There was little of the lean, snappingly ferocious man Mirrum remembered from her first encounter. He looked old, crushed. Bitter as gall.

'My lord, you are not well!' Mirrum put out a concerned hand lest Tiberias should take it into his head to fall from his horse in turn. 'You should –'

'I am well, child.' The Lord Marshal shook his grizzled head, and then looked down. He still held the king's fallen glove in one hand. 'What do you do here?'

'Cana.' Mirrum tired to smile. 'With Sybilla.'

'Ay, Cana. As the world crumbles about us.' Tiberias said sourly. '"Cana!" And she sends you here to be trampled underfoot by the war host for...?'

'I am sent to ask how her brother fares, my lord.' Mirrum anxiously fiddled with a loosened thread in her skirt. 'She is much concerned for his welfare...'

Tiberias turned to throw a glance over his shoulder at Sybilla. She still stood rooted to the spot – but her gaze was fastened hungrily on a weary, bloodstained knight still standing with the point of his sword resting in the dust.

'So I see.' He said, sardonically. 'In her fashion. Nay, wait-' For Mirrum had turned ashamedly to wander back to her mistress. 'What do you do here, pale child? You look almost as lost as I...' Tiberias halted. 'Did you seek your Physician?'

'He is not here.' Mirrum said bitterly. 'I am sure of it.'

'And what assures you of that?' Tiberias asked quietly, bending, under pretence of patting his horse's neck, to look at Mirrum's face.

'He did not – I thought he would...'

'Show himself to you?'

'... Aid the King.' Mirrum said resolutely. 'If my – if the Physician were there he would have helped, I know it. He was too kindly... or I thought him so.' She added. 'But he is either absent, or – worse-' she choked on the word. 'A faint-hearted craven who would not help his master. A-and I do not know what to think, or do, and I-'

'You are tired,' Tiberias interjected. 'And Sybilla has deserted you.' His face looked grimly thoughtful – and with no very propitious thoughts. 'Come,' he said abruptly. 'Ride with me.'

'W-what?'

'Ride with me –' The Lord Marshal leant down from the saddle. 'You are not afraid to ride pillion, I hope?'

'I-'

Mirrum had scarcely time to utter acceptance or denial. Tiberias might be a lean man, but he had sinews of steel and he had hauled Mirrum clean from the ground before she knew where she was in an undignified rumple, propping her before him.

'My reputation as a cynical bachelor,' Tiberias said, in a faint growling attempt to make her smile, 'is already in lamentable tatters as it is, thanks to Sybilla's rumours of mistresses, hmm? There.'

He impatiently kicked his horse into a gallop.

'We ride to the front of the line, pale girl.' He said abstractedly. 'I have a favour to ask of you.'

It was a long journey. The war host had threaded some far away along the dusty road to Jerusalem, and the ill condition of the road to Kerak meant the progress was slower than was its wont. Even at full gallop it took Tiberias well nigh an hour to gain the head of the line – a frightening, bouncing journey for Mirrum, perilously perched at the front of the saddle. But Tiberias was an excellent horseman.

On gaining the front of the column, Tiberias stopped . The litter with Tiberias' poor Fisher King lay ahead, painfully making its way forward at walking pace.

'Here. I said I had a favour to ask of you,' Tiberias said quietly, nudging Mirrum out of the saddle. He slid wincingly from it himself, to stagger forward a few paces. 'There. Take that horse.'

'What?!'

It was the King's mount Tiberias was urging her to – a mild-mannered grey with a placid temper who trotted riderless behind, led by a flagging squire. It was as though Tiberias had urged her to... to...

'I can't ride that, lord!' Mirrum hissed.

'Why not?'

'That would be...'

'I say you shall.' Tiberias said firmly. '_Hup-la_! Up with you!'

'But I _cannot_ ride...'

'You don't need to. This isn't a mad steed of Sybilla's brood. Now – _you. _Wait here whilst I...'

Tiberias swung himself back into the saddle to murmur, urgently, into the words of the chief litter-bearer, and then in a murmur to his liege.

'_Here, majesty.' _Tiberias said softly – but with grim face. _'I give you your chance for grace.'_

No answer.

'_Majesty! If __**you**__ do not undeceive her, I __**must**__.'_ Tiberias said ruthlessly. '_And God forgive me, but I shall think less of the greatest king I have ever served if he dies with a lie on his lips. Give confession. That is all. Confession.'_

Mirrum heard nothing of this. She was confused by the utterly incomprehensible turn of the Lord Marshal's mood; and far more alarmed by the great blasphemy of riding a king's horse than she had been at the unreal prospect of war. But she saw Tiberias sharply turn away his head and wheel back to her.

'My favour,' he said severely, as though forbidding protest. 'The King is restless, and in some pain. Ride by his side. That is all I ask. A little company may do some good; more...congenial company than my own.' Tiberias stared straight ahead, his eyes bright. Over-bright, perhaps?

'I am no physician, lord –' Mirrum began in a frightened whisper.

'_Ride_. Comfort him. For – if not for my sake, then for... Christ's.' Tiberias said abruptly. 'A little compassion is all I ask of you, and if you can – _forgiveness_.'

'Forgiveness?' Mirrum asked in puzzlement, but Tiberias had let out a hoarse cry to urge his horse back to the tail of the column. The last she saw of him was a spray of stinging dust before her eyes.

And there Mirrum was, swaying slowly to the rhythm of her horse's footbeats and gazing with some trepidation on a king.


	29. Chapter 29

Mirrum found herself without words. Utterly. It was terrible – her tongue had thickened and slurred within her mouth to a sluggish thing, slow, and with none of the ready sense that should have saved her at this moment. Where was the wit, the unquestioning obedience? The strangeness of the...

_Here I am,_ Mirrum's thoughts ran stupidly, _Riding a_ _king's horse back_ _to Jerusalem. Riding a king's horse...like in the Gospels, wasn't it? Only... God's grace, I'm riding next to a __**king**__. _

Mirrum looked down at the horse' hooves trotting easily beneath her. It was a matter of resolutely concentrating on small details to detract from the enormity of larger truths; like the way there were threads of silver in the horse's coarse mane when you looked closely enough, the way the dust fell on the road...

Her thoughts were all in confusion. She did not know _how_ to think.

Sybilla...Now, Sybilla was another matter. Pretty, witty, laughing Sybilla with her sad eyes and restless painted fingers. Mirrum could still dimly remember how terrified she had been of _her_ at first. But that had been so _different, _so incomparable to this other sort of meeting now. Sybilla was of royal blood, _yes._ But she had been a seraph wrapped in a swathe of flame-coloured silk, beautiful, careless...

Careless.

The word dropped like a cold pebble into the scorching whirlwind of Mirrum's mind. Careless. Yes, Sybilla _was_ careless – but in quite another sense of the word. Inscrutable, distant, strange Sybilla. Sybilla who let her brother drop to the dust, with her face stricken and her voice harsh. Frightened, _ashamed _Sybilla.

Mirrum was not sure what might have happened had she ever had a brother. Mirrum would surely have been relegated to the numbing minutiae of woman's work, whilst the boy would have been instructed in her father's great work, given generously the whole portion of his cleric's knowledge and scholar's learning, whilst Mirrum would have only scrambled listlessly for dropped crumbs of wisdom. She would have been ignorant. She could _never_ have come to Jerusalem. She might have hated this brother who never existed, who knows? _He _might have been arrogant, or conceited, or brutal. But...

To watch him fall? Let him lie anguished, and then but send a... a _servant_ to ask how he fared? Nobility were different from common folk, true, but...That was a facet of nature Mirrum had _never_ suspected in Sybilla. Mirrum was _nothing_. She keenly felt the insult to the King in being sent in such a fashion. It seemed wantonly _cruel _to a brother.

It must be said, Mirrum knew nothing of the sickness. Poor child, she was little more than an innocent – a dazed gosling staggering along an uncertain path Mirrum only thought uncertainly of as 'right.' She knew _nothing _of the little cowardices men are capable of in the face of so great an affliction. Lepers were merely the faceless sick for whom one offered prayers for back in England. At the very most, it dwelt only dimly in her memory as a furled illustration looped around the first letter of a breviary – a painted picture of hooded beggars at a city gate. And _here_ there was such a hush upon the subject because of the King himself that there was no possibility of learning the truth about the sickness. Sybilla had sent her maid because she was afraid and ashamed. And Mirrum knew nothing of it all...

The clip-clop of the interminable number of horse's hooves seemed to beat to the pounding of blood in Mirrum's head. She closed her eyes, to see if the sickly feeling went away, but the garish brightness of the sun printed black lines across her eyelids, making her see white-hot stars everywhere she looked. The heat was terrible. Stifling.

But how much _worse_ for a sick man, Mirrum thought suddenly, forehead sticky with sweat where the cloak's hood had clung to her brow. In _this _heat...

Horribly aware of her discourtesy, she ventured to peer timidly into the swaying litter. She had dishonoured Tiberias by not holding to her promise to keep company with the – the...

Mirrum's words stuck horribly in her throat. The King.

Tiberias' King lay still. So very still, at first, that for a terrifying moment Mirrum feared he was beyond what company could do. Until she noticed the way the embroidered surcoat sharply rose and fell with each stertorous breath – a shuddering, harsh motion that seemed to half-smother the King with the effort. At least he was still alive, then, Mirrum thought anxiously. But in what pain? It was impossible to see whether he saw her or not; that calm impassive face was turned away from her, looking towards the long column of swaying dust following in their wake. All there was to reassure her she kept company with a living man was that slow process of breathing...

Mirrum watched fearfully, less that small movement should cease. She watched so long her eyes watered, and she was forced to turn them away from a sudden gust of stinging desert wind, one hand raised before her eyes. When she looked back again, the King's head had fallen back, helplessly tossed by the motion of the bearers. It seemed wrong to stare; Mirrum could hardly help it. She hardly liked to speak when it was plain he would hardly take comfort from a down-at-heel waiting woman offered as a pathetic substitute for a sister's concern...

Mirrum's pale face grew pink as she thought of that. How he must _hate_ her, if he knew that. She ventured another nervous glance towards the mask.

His eyes were closed. No telling whether he were even conscious or no...

'Is he still alive, then?'

Mirrum started as something unceremoniously smacked against her shoulder. Cantering at her side, rode the Lord Patriarch of Jerusalem, his patrician nostrils flaring in weighty disdain. He had twitched his riding crop lightly across the cloaked shoulders, thinking it to be a heathen apothecary. He looked taken aback to find it was a slight girl instead.

'What right have _you_ to be here, woman?'

Mirrum gasped, the shock taking her by surprise. As well as the outrage. She had never come into such unpleasant proximity to the Patriarch before.

'My Lord bishop!' Mirrum made a slight bow in the saddle. More of an abrupt wriggle; she was taken aback by the strangeness she seemed to find _everywhere_. First Sybilla would not see her brother, then Tiberias had seated her upon a king's warhorse and now - the Patriarch casually dismissing his King as though he were less than the ragged beggars who clustered about the David Gate seeking alms. 'I did not think you rode with the war host – I thought you still in Jerusalem...'

'So I would be,' sniffed Heraclius, with a lowering of his greying brow. 'If Fate were kind and the fool were dead already.'

Mirrum strove to look politely puzzled. 'Oh?'

'Don't be obtuse, woman. I am his priest. If he _dies_ I must give confession. You _are_ sure he still breathes?'

Mirrum's jaw tightened. She turned her face away under pretence of bowing toward the litter –

And froze.

The King had moved. Oh, he still kept his eyes closed. Perhaps it was mere accident, and not through overhearing the bishop, that one hand slowly curled itself into a clenched fist, that the breathing seemed to acquire a sharper quality.

'_He is ten times worse than the rest of the world believes...'_

Mirrum could well believe the Physician on that point now about my lord Patriarch. She could not believe it chance, that contorted glove. The King had heard them .

'His Majesty,' she said slowly, 'Still lives. And, pray God, he may recover from his hurt today...'

'You little fool.' Heraclius said dismissively. 'He will not recover. One of the Princess' idiot waiting-women, aren't you? What do you here? Where is your mistress?'

'She stayed behind,' Mirrum said reluctantly. 'The lord Marshal brought me –'

'Ah!' Heraclius' eyebrows rose a significant inch. 'Lord Tiberias? I see all now.' He looked Mirrum up and down with evident disfavour. 'His taste in mistresses is to be lamented.'

Mirrum hated hotly inside her head. If wishes were curses, the noble Patriarch would have melted into a greasy patch on the hot stones of the road to Jerusalem. But alas, wishes were no curse. He didn't melt yet. But Mirrum noticed with savage satisfaction that the Patriarch suffered from the heat too. There were sweat-dampened patches beneath the gold broidered arms of his bishop's mantle. Good! Mirrum thought venomously. _Let_ him sweat himself into a sickness!

The Patriarch coughed sonorously, evidently preparing himself for a lengthy sermon on the subject of fallen women. 'Well, it is hardly fitting that _you_ should –' he began. And then halted, his words trailing away as his gaze snagged upon something within the litter. The King's maimed hand had horribly fixed his attention.

The Patriarch Heraclius was a coward. But he had not the grace to be ashamed of her own fear, as Sybilla had, or the ability to mask it with bravado. He visibly recoiled as though the very glimpse could poison his sight. Without a word he wheeled his horse about, forcing his horse into a gallop with a vigorous application of his spurs.

Mirrum breathed hard, if only to calm the angry exclamation threatening to burst from her chest. She _was_ angry. She would have liked to-

She stopped.

The impassive mask had eyes, a statue's face brought into sudden, sharp life by the shine of a glance. They caught her own gaze, blinked once - and then looked away.

Mirrum was dismayed. This was not at all how she had imagined a meeting with a king. Not after the hideous insensibility of the Patriarch. What should a servant _say_?

'Majesty?' Mirrum's voice quavered, horribly uncertain of the etiquette, and unhappily aware she seemed to be in some disfavour. 'I – that is, the Lord Marshal...'

The face turned, slightly, as though in brief acknowledgement she had spoken. But it remained utterly silent.

'Forgive me, but the Lord Marshal asked me to... to keep you company upon the way, Majesty, and offer you what –comforts I can.' Mirrum tried to recall the courtly phrases Ammet could have so perfectly uttered. 'I – that is, with your permission?' she added, anxiously, for the perfect slight smile of the Apollo face had turned away from her again, and the King attempted, with difficulty, to turn himself upon one elbow. The gloved hand plucked feebly, grasping thinly at empty air.

Mirrum watched in perplexity, wondering if he were trying to summon one of the grave attendants in her place and she should creep away before she was chivvied away by an officious physician. But as she leaned over her horse's neck, pondering the problem of dismounting, she could see more clearly within the litter, and she understood what the King strove to do.

The maimed hand – the ungloved one, with which he had struck Reynaud de Chatillon, lay exposed in full sunlight. It was enough to strike a mortal unease, if not actual fear, into any man, be he the Patriarch or no. Perhaps the heat pained it - perhaps the King did not like that a servant should see his suffering. But whatever the cause, the gloved hand was now struggling to grasp its fellow, to hide it away from sight.

But how can dead flesh know what it touches? The King's sight was dim; he could scarcely see. He could not feel to grasp the hand, nor move it decently away into obscurity. The power was lost to him, made infinitely worse by weakness from the over-exertions at Kerak.

Mirrum looked on in silence. To her own surprise, she was not as shaken as she had feared she might be. There was no denying; it _was _a terrible sight. There were but three fingers – two were nothing more than stumps over which the seamed white flesh had closed. The sores glistened, wetly, and looked horribly painful; they seemed freshly opened, perhaps under the chafing pressure of the glove as he rode. Yes. Yes, it _was_ terrible. But Mirrum wasn't... _afraid,_ exactly. That wasn't the right name for it. Perhaps it was less spurred on by compassion than a hot desire to better the good Patriarch Heraclius, but Mirrum did not draw back.

But...Tiberias still had the other glove. He was probably still clutching it distractedly, lost in the column of mailed knights as one among many. And Mirrum had left aside her usual linen coif because of the heat of the journey. There was nothing to _use_. All she had was the dress she wore – a gauzy, garish thing, left behind by Ammet and ill fitting– and the stiff cloak she wore. _Nothing..._

Or ..._almost_ nothing.

Mirrum raised her arm discreetly and examined it, before deliberately tearing the left sleeve, ripping the thin, worn linen as though it were nothing but cobweb. It gave easily enough under the rough handling; numerous washings had worn it almost bare.

Mirrum clutched the thin strip of sleeve into a crumple in one hand, still horribly uncertain of how to proceed. _'Comfort him,_' Tiberias had said. A moment ago it had seemed so plain, all she needed to do. But there were terrible penalties for touching a king without permission, weren't there? How if she...

She looked again towards Tiberias' master. He was still fruitlessly struggling to move. It was plain his will must be powerful; to fight his way from unconsciousness so quickly, but his silent, vicious battle against his own weakness seemed to have reached a point where only defeat could follow.

Mirrum bent her head in what she hoped was a more gracious obeisance than the one she made to the Patriarch, pulling the hood from her head.

'Majesty?' she said anxiously. The King ceased moving so restlessly. Mirrum hardly expected such a sign of attention; she feared him floundering on the edge of consciousness, but he turned his head to look directly at her. Mirrum had to suppress an inward jolt of surprise.

For _Sybilla_'s eyes looked out at her from behind the calm features of the mask. It was _Sybilla'_s colour, the shape, lost in the hollows. It was a shock - but now she was close enough to see; that peculiar, faded shade of grey-blue. The colour was a little deeper in the King's eyes. And the gaze was not the light, restless searching that Sybilla indulged in, her look twitching over face, hands, clothes with an appraisal of everything all at once. The King looked straight at her face and let the glance remain there, until Mirrum's face grew quite hot with embarrassment that he stared at her so long.

'If you please-' Mirrum began, haltingly, her fingers turning the torn linen over and over. She stopped, to hold out one hand in quiet appeal. 'With your permission?'

Swathing it in the cloth proved no easy matter. Mirrum was afraid lest she hurt him through some inept mistake. He seemed almost as fragile as spun glass, like Sybilla's silvered Venetian mirror, and the hand Mirrum tentatively lifted had all the brittleness of bird's bones. The nodding rhythm of her horse and the litter made it hard for anything to be done at such a jolting pace. Mirrum had to keep her movements slow for fear of shaking him as the war host moved slowly onwards.

The maimed hand remained almost frozen in its place as she clumsily tried to swaddle it decently out of sight. Mirrum was almost certain he looked at her still. She could feel the hot, strange sense of _being looked at,_ of being quietly observed.

There. It was done. At least he would not be insulted with the craven weakness of men like the Patriarch, Mirrum reasoned tiredly. The emotions of the day had left her weak...

But as her fingers left the crude bandaging she had contrived, something arrested them mid-way before they could fall back to the reins of her horse.

It was a handful of gloved fingers.

Easily explained; the King, perhaps, had merely clutched them by mistake...But it, surely, could not be a mistake that he clung to them?

Mirrum flashed a startled glance at the King, only for her breath to catch in her throat. It was the way he _looked _at her. It was too intense, too earnest to merely be the vague concentration of delirium, as she had fancied. He was _looking_ at her agitatedly, with genuine distress shining from the eyes of the smiling Apollo– and as Mirrum looked on in consternation, not understanding, he lifted her hand to brush it, gently, over one cool incised metal cheek. It had an odd heat to it under Mirrum's hand, warmed as it was by the face beneath. And –

_A girl in a forgotten garden, lifting an unseen hand to her own cheek and lamenting the loss of a world._

No matter that they rode through desert and rock-strewn wilderness under the humidity of a dying sun. Mirrum's world froze into ice as realisation dashed against her. The desert became the white wasteland of a northern winter. Jerusalem whirled away, became a bleak outcrop of grey stone, featureless and blank. Something in Mirrum snapped, shivered, and died in the blast from that unnatural cold. Alone. Weak. Frozen.

Mirrum was dimly aware that the gloved fingers still held hers. She clutched at them, dizzily. The Physician...the _King?_ Her own Physician, the King who was Tiberias' master? She stared blindly at the swimming patch of silver as the world began to freeze again, gliding in and out of focus. Perhaps the ice froze her eyelashes together? Mirrum thought giddily. Her father had often told of winters cold enough to revive the old pagan frost-giants...Perhaps it was the cold of a fresh winter that made her head spin so strangely...

Tiberias, the King... Mirrum, Sybilla, Ammet... _her_ Physician...the letter... the mailed knight with the kindly face, the.... the...

'You know me.' The King said tonelessly. There was that same hollow note in his voice – now he spoke, at last – that Mirrum dimly recognised from the twilight talks – that peculiar muffled echo she had wondered at so often. It was the mask that caught his words and bounced them back again. She had thought it merely the distance of the balcony from the garden.

'Sire,' Tiberias' voice said quietly. He trotted behind at a respectful distance apart from his liege lord, and when he urged his horse gently forward, he did not look at Mirrum. 'We halt here for tonight. No further.'

Mirrum shook her head, slowly, like one who has been stunned, and looked wide-eyed about her – before turning back to the King, as though to hope it was some heat-stricken dream. But he no longer looked at her. Both he and the Lord Marshal seemed determined to look anywhere but at her...

The imaginary cold was very strong. It made Mirrum shiver from head to foot as though caught in the grip of a bitter north wind.

'Hold, child...' Tiberias had reached over to hold back her horse's reins. The fingers clutched hers, convulsively, before they relaxed their grip, slid away as the litter moved onwards. Away.

'I –' The word choked her, like a hot apple. 'I...'

'I know, child.' Tiberias said quietly. 'I know. You know, now, what I could not tell you before about your Physician. I – God's grace, girl, you are heat-struck!'

'What?' Mirrum said dazedly. 'I am well, sir –'

'The Devil you are. Too much heat doing its worst for you. Here-' Tiberias gruffly got down, with a curse, and pulled himself wincingly up behind Mirrum, taking the reins from her slackened hands. 'I know what you feel, you know.' He said, from somewhere above Mirrum's right ear. 'I have trodden this bitter road before. I half-hoped he would not confess to you in the end.'

Mirrum eventually found a voice, from somewhere. 'But..._W_-_why_?'

'Why?' Tiberias peered over her shoulder, and then stared straight ahead into the middle distance. He would not for worlds have admitted to seeing Mirrum cry. 'You were kind. That was why. You did not pity him. You love him - revered him. That is something kings dream of as well as men.'

'But ...he _spoke_ of the King to me...'

'Doubtless he... did.' Tiberias spoke heavily. 'I think perhaps... he was _your _Physician and not the King whilst he spoke to you. Come now,' and when he spoke he was so kindly as to almost make Mirrum weep, 'Why should he not care for you? You are a kindly, unassuming creature – wiser than most. More thoughtful than most. Is it not possible for _him_ to think softly of you? Besides – you have a wisdom beyond your years, girl-child.' Tiberias looked down at the frowsy head, shaking bewildered in the saddle.

'I'm not wise,' Mirrum looked towards the distant litter. 'If I was wiser I would have _known,_ I would have-'

Been kinder. Not offering the sort of cold pity you give to a stranger out of remote sympathy. Mirrum was falling through the many things that were made too plain before her eyes now.

'No.' Tiberias said simply, one gloved hand awkwardly patting her own. He was not practiced in comfort – yet by saying very little he managed to say much.

'I saw you. I was watching. Even not knowing who– who he was to you, when he was a faceless stranger-king. You dared to give comfort and kindliness...' Tiberias looked unhappily towards the confusion of dusty figures that was the camp, for the night. 'And God alone knows what to make of it all.'


	30. Chapter 30

The camp was struck by a handful of baked dirt and dust that passed for a village, this far from the cities, where feral dogs and mud-caked children stared from doorways at the clamour and the noise, ribs sticking out like bent twigs. It was a starved town. A silent, hungry town, which took the arrival of the war host of all Christendom with incurious resignation as the tents were struck beside the mud-cracked banks of the river. The campfires of the night made pinpricks of orange light on a greying sky, the too-bright sand dulled to the blank greyness of twilight. It was a beautiful, even striking sight: the motley war host of the Christian world a dim cluster of mushroom-sprouting tents and the huddled shape of soldiers crouched close around the warmth of a fire. Ferocious and unrelenting as the sun might be during the day, the night had a chill that would not be amiss in the frozen northern wastes.

But Mirrum noticed none of it. She was still shocked into that blank white frost-world that had shaken Jerusalem to its very foundations like the walls of Jericho, a thousand wild and disconnected thoughts passing through her head like a snatch of song she could not dislodge. A sad, pale version of King Cophetua and the beggar maid, yes? An awful, jeering voice whispered in her mind. Yes, ask Sybilla for her blessing _now._ Dower you off handsomely, will she, to your Physician? _Yours_! What can you call _yours_?

'Down,' Tiberias said abruptly. It had entirely escaped Mirrum's notice that they had stopped at all. She was still moving to an entirely imaginary beat of the swaying column, nodding wearily in the saddle to the gentle jogging of hoofbeats.

With one last effort, Mirrum forced herself to pull her skirts together and slid from the horse – but she held dizzily to the bridle as the world seemed to skew sideways, the colours melting into each other like hot candlewax...

'God's bones!' The Lord Marshal's voice seemed to drift from a great distance away. 'Pale child-'

'I am quite well,' Mirrum said muzzily. The world was not trying to throw her off-balance so much now; the gently-breathing flanks of the white palfrey were an anchor that made the earth slow in its spinning. 'I-'

'Out of the sun, little dolt!' Tiberias prised her fingers firmly from the still-taut grip on the reins. 'Into the cool. _Rest_.'

'I am well!' Mirrum protested. 'I should find... find Sybilla...it is not fitting that I should-'

'My lady Sybilla,' Tiberias said tonelessly, with a face like stone, 'did not ride with the war host. She took a swifter road to Jerusalem – and doubtless will not miss your company.'

'Ammet left her, too-' Mirrum said vaguely, waving a hand at the silent desert. 'To be married –'

'I am sure the Princess will _not_ lament your absence.' Raymond of Tripoli's tone could have put a rime of frost upon a white-hot blade. 'She has **other** concerns to attend to, no doubt.'

Mirrum remembered very little of what happened next. She was little more than a white-faced rag doll; she moved obediently where directed. There just seemed to be very little thought behind it all.

There were advantages in Tiberias' position. Willingly or no, he was one with the high command of the army, and a tent had already been struck for him. It was a haven of rough comfort compared to the sharp chill already whetting the darkness outside. But he did not turn to look at Mirrum again. He had not looked at her since they had halted for the night and he strode ahead as though he were doing his utmost to shake her off with the dust of his cloak. Mirrum hardly noticed, though. She followed mechanically behind as though she were a toy knight pulled by invisible wires, moving stiff, stick-like limbs.

Tiberias nodded, brusquely, at the two squires obediently flanking the tent with sleep-crusted eyes. 'Leave us.' He said, shortly. 'Not _you_ -' For Mirrum had turned, confusedly, to go. '_You_ stay.'

'Y-yes, my lord...'

Tiberias turned, with a half-suppressed exclamation. War was plainly not so uncomfortable a business as it was for the common soldiers – there was a softly-glowing brazier, two rough stools – a makeshift table. An already filled flagon of wine. Raymond of Tripoli's squires learned to anticipate their master's darker moods. Tiberias leant towards it as heavily as a dying man reaching for water.

'I wonder,' he said harshly, almost into his wine-cup, 'When you will begin to _feel_ it, as I did.'

'Feel it?' Mirrum said dully.

'Ha.' Tiberias said bleakly. 'Yes. Hard, when you see his quality. He drained the cup and set it down. 'Well?' he said, almost savagely. 'Don't _stand_ there! Sit. Talk.'

Mirrum sat - like an obedient dog – but she did not talk. Her tousled head snapped up, two huge grey eyes looking through the curtain of hair. Her eyes were sharp – two chips of flint staring out of an ashen face. She was shivering slightly – although not with the cold, and oddly enough, not with fear at being so far from the familiar.

'Talk?' she said, in a careful, cold voice. The frost had thawed now; that bleak, icy world of fresh truth. To be replaced by something else, that brought a bitter taste to her mouth. 'I _suppose_ I'll feel it in a while, my lord. I think. I... suppose I'll get over it, by and by.'

'You suppose.' Tiberias said flatly. 'You _suppose_.' His voice rose. 'You use such mincing beggarly words as a sop to placate _me_?'

'I have no desire to placate _you_, my lord.' Mirrum almost spat the words out, like the bitter taste of iron in her mouth. 'I ask forgiveness of only – only...' her voice trailed away. 'How long have you known? Sybilla, you – how long have you all known I was playing a – a –' Mirrum's mouth formed into a silent wail – that gulping, ugly, pink-flushed face where one is halfway between a great scream and hiccoughing sobs.

To Mirrum's vague, miserable astonishment, there was a kind of grim relief etched on Tiberias' face.

'There.' He said abruptly, leaning back to sink into his seat. 'That's better. I like you far better as a mewling kitten, madam. I misliked that daze of yours very much.' He said it so gently Mirrum choked herself into a fresh fit of weeping. 'It reminds me of a battle-chill. We've all had it, once or twice. When you make your first kill in battle, pale child, at the end of it those who still stand very much resembled you. You were fortunate enough not to see that today.' Tiberias drained the cup almost in one draught. 'But the chills, the shaking – I've seen _that_ before. That's not for you. And I am already steeped in things I have left undone.' Tiberias looked at her, straight. 'And untold. But as for Sybilla – child! No-one knows. But me.'

'She s-said she was sorry.' A horrible, whooping laugh came from somewhere – it seemed impossible it could be her own voice. 'Hah! Said she'd dower me off handsomely now she knew what love was –'

Tiberias fell silent at that. 'I am sorry. That was –

'Nothing.' Mirrum hiccupped, miserably. 'I...I...'

'Here.' Tiberias thrust the wine-cup towards Mirrum. 'God knows you need it more than I. Keeps the chill off.' He grunted, and then leant down towards the furled saddle roll he had brought with him. 'Here.'

It was Tiberias' battered old chess board – the one that had stood in the quiet cool of his rooms. It seemed a lifetime ago, those little games of life and death fought over a notched wooden board – but Tiberias set it upon the table with a kind of reverence – as though it were the San Graal of games.

'Play.' Tiberias said, looking narrowly at Mirrum. The dark eyes did not snap sparks tonight –they glowed, quietly, in the ruddy light from the brazier.

'I –' Mirrum touched a pawn, and then tiredly let it roll from her fingers. 'I-I can't –I...'

'**Play,**' Tiberias repeated sternly. 'It will do you good. Sit, _think_, and play. And in a Paternoster's while you may find the world righted again.' He sighed. It might not be the world you want, or the world you knew before – but it keeps to its course as it always does.'

It was not so much a game, that night, as a confessional, in which Mirrum was an unwilling ghostly confederate. Listening to Tiberias was a hard thing. It changed the world Mirrum knew. It made her weep. It made her glad, often, too – although it went so often with the rooted sorrow that it hurt to think, much, for now. But amongst the staccato _click/click _of the gaming board, Mirrum found a space in which to collect her scattered thoughts. And Tiberias _talked_. He talked much, and long, unlike any of the brief conversations with the Lord of Tripoli. In fact it was utterly unlike any speech Mirrum had with men. Raymond of Tripoli talked like a man trying to wring sin from his soul.

He talked of his king. He talked of Catullus, and of the lost letter. The one Mirrum never saw. He talked of the _Carmine_; of poetry and thought and the whisper of lost footsteps. He asked questions, too, although they often seemed more to be addressed to the empty air. Perhaps he spoke to his invisible conscience, as though it were glaringly staring at its master like a reproachful spectre at the feast. For it was quite plain that whenever the Lord of Tripoli glanced towards the flickering shadows the candlelight cast on the swaying walls of the tent, the glance was filled with a strange shame and abstraction. But he talked on. He talked of the nature of distraction, the way a knight may notice a dozen telltale signs in an overlord. It was as though the Lord Marshal were drunk on spilt words.

Mirrum paused, fingers hovering over the pale carved figure of the white king. She was tempted to knock it down, end the game of words and painful truths. But – though her fingers gently touched the polished wood, sketching the surface – she did not push it down.

'Thank you,' she said, instead. Tiberias words had slowed, stopped. He sat in a long, eerie silence. 'For... for speaking, to me – of...'

'Of him?' Tiberias said shortly. He raised aching shoulders to straighten up with a visible wince. 'That was owed you, if nothing more, child –'

'Not now.' Mirrum looked downwards. 'Before. Before I knew. You tried to speak to me of h-him over the gaming board, remember? You told me of the Patriarch and the old – King. You tried to help me understand. If I had been wiser, perhaps I might have guessed the truth and then –'

'He would have told you.' Tiberias' voice was a hollow echo in the dim light. 'Perhaps he thought you already knew. But you mistook him for a _physician_...and you let him escape. Become a man, at least in your eyes, rather than the sad revenant Sybilla would have him be.' Tiberias looked down, breathed hard through his nose, before looking up at Mirrum with his faded dark eyes. Tiberias was a bear still – but a chained bear, heat struck and heart weary with unspoken woe in his grizzled muzzle.

'He spoke of you to me, you know.' He said , still averting his gaze from Mirrum. 'Just as you spoke of your Physician to me. Whilst you were... at Cana.' He blinked over-much, perhaps, as he rose to his feet. 'Never be the wall between Pyramus and Thisbe, pale child. It's a hard thing to be a silent witness.'


	31. Chapter 31

Mirrum had overmuch time for thought, as Tiberias rose to his feet. The silence was not unwelcome. After all, it had been no dramatic revelation. There had been no melodramatic scene, no echo of the foolish _romaunts_ Mirrum used to like so much. It had hardly used words at all. A brief three words, spoken by the Physic- by the _King_, and all was over. _You know me._

Yes. Mirrum did. Or thought she did. She painfully, mercilessly racked her memories, dragged them over the hot coals of the facts.

Tiberias seemed to sense this, for he looked sharply down at the wasted little figure with the wide eyes slumped in the chair, pale hair stuck to the pink, flushed face.

'Let it alone, now –' he began, gently. 'Pale child –'

A nervous movement of liveried blue from the flap of the tent caught his eye. Damn. An officious squire, hovering with trembling hands and hesitant look as though dreading his lord's displeasure.

He was right to do so. Tiberias _was_ displeased, and the rate at which he snapped out a quick flood of unspeakable Norman-French curses under his breath would have floored even a smooth-tongued cleric.

'Forgive me,' he said abruptly. 'Some news, doubtless –' And without another word left, eyes darting fury at the hapless squire – a beardless boy with dazed expression and frightened eyes. 'Well!' he barked. 'Damn you, what-'

'Salahuddinhassentaretinuebearingflagoftruce-' The boy said, words tumbling over each other in an effort to get out.

'Say that in a God-fearing tongue, boy. Not slack-wit's gibberish.'

'Lord Salahuddin, my lord! There is a retinue bearing a flag of truce heading towards the camp, my lord! You are needed, there is no-one, and my lord Gerard of Ridfort speaks of ambushes and beheadings and-'

'My lord Gerard of Ridfort,' Tiberias said deliberately, quickening his pace, 'is a maniacal fool with less wit than a singed sheep's head. The _retinue _is my lord Salahuddin's physician. Great kings, whilst opponents, are capable of great courtesy towards each other. Unlike my lord Ridfort.' He glanced fleetingly back towards the tent, and the girl, but it was only a second's glance. Time would heal much, perhaps.

'Tell me,' Tiberias muttered, one gloved hand gripping the squire's shoulder. 'How does the King?'

'The King?' the boy turned wide, dismayed eyes towards the Lord Marshal, and looked down towards the ground. 'He does but poorly, sir. The apothecaries contest he should not have been moved to travel out from Jerusalem.'

'Ay? Well, he has moved, of his own will.' Tiberias said bleakly. 'What's to be done now he _has_ travelled?'

The boy looked startled. 'My lord, I am but a squire –'

'Nay -I did not ask you. Speaking to my own conscience there.' Tiberias let his lips twitch into a thin shade of a smile, and then limped on resolutely towards the dirt track, duty, and the old forms of diplomacy.

Salahuddin's physician was a wrinkled little walnut of a man, swathed in a cape of red cloth that near drowned the man entirely and with a face that looked as though it had been carved from knotted oak. It was all lines.

'I have little that is needed,' he chirruped worriedly, struggling to keep pace with the lean range of Raymond of Tripoli. 'Were there more _time _...'He shook his head again, looking down at the carved wooden box tucked beneath his arm. 'I mislike these days of anger in the sun, my lord.'

As do I, Tiberias thought dismally. But he did not voice his agreement; he turned the subject abruptly to another theme. 'How long, pray you, have you been-'

'In Lord Salahuddin's service?' The little man smiled. 'Forever and a day. I am fortunate that my master is a kindly one.'

'Ay.' Tiberias halted, slowing his pace.

The pavilion of the King was busy. Attendants scurried here and there busily like ants, faces carefully expressionless, eyes dulled – although whether through exhaustion from the ride or despair-

No. Tiberias closed the path of that thought. Follow your own advice, man. Let it _alone_.

'Can you do aught that they...cannot?'

Salahuddin's little physician looked grave. 'I cannot say yet, my lord. Your king is not left solely to the tender mercies of Frankish medicine, I hope? I have seen so-called French _doctors_ in Acre-'

'Not quite,' Tiberias said sharply. 'I crave your indulgence, Master Leech, but I must speak awhile with my master first...'

There was a silence within the tent. A dreadful lull in speech, and the oppression of the quiet was almost as unbearable as the heat of the desert, or the frost of a northern winter . Silence was an inhospitable roaring waste, howling its eternal nothings on the slight desert breeze. The white-clad attendants had the look of condemned men themselves; they gathered together in twos and threes like bewildered sheep, looking faintly askance at the presence of the Lord of Tripoli. Their eyes slid sideways to look elsewhere if he chanced to meet their glance.

Tiberias stopped. 'I am the first, then.' He said quietly. 'No other lord has ventured to –'

'No, my lord.' A Frankish physician; a rheumy fellow with drooping yellowed eyes and a balding pate, ventured from a corner. 'I believe they wait for news from _us_ as to how the King fares –'

Tiberias opened his mouth, as though to utter some curse – and then wearily shut it again.

'No matter.' He said, looking about him. 'No matter. Lord Salahuddin has sent his own doctor. He seems – hopeful.' If dismissive. Although looking at the Frankish physician, and all he stood for – a half-sodden creature, living off an old reputation for keenness and the aptitude of half a dozen skilled apprentices - Tiberias could appreciate the man's contempt for what the Franks called a 'doctor'.

But neither Frank nor Saracen physician could ever have equalled Mirrum's expectations.

The King lay within a lightly partition part of the tent; the centre of the deathly hush, perhaps, that had spread to the uncertain attendants. Tiberias had not been without preparations; such comfort as could be brought upon the march from Jerusalem had been contrived. Slight though they were.

At first sight, it had the solemn aspect of a bier. Something Raymond of Tripoli had seen far too often in his lifetime. The white linen, the still figure lying quiet upon the rough couch rather more like the carved effigy of a king than a living one. He rested.

Perhaps that was better for him, Tiberias thought quietly, withdrawing with a flutter of the linen canopy. He was, at least, spared that.

A brief flash of alien colour caught the Lord Marshal's eye as he turned to leave; made him pause, catch his breath.

The thin scrap of linen – a green bleached almost white by the sun – still lay in a crumpled heap close by. The King had been tended by more assured hands than Mirrum. It was the sight of it discarded, like a dropped favour at a tournament lying neglected in the dust, which made Tiberias stop dead.

'Yes...' The effigy moved, slowly, moving from stiff semblance of carved stone into a faint echo of life, if not the very essence of it. 'She was kind.'

Tiberias looked down. 'Yes, Majesty.'

'I would not have told her-' There was something, even then, of fierce challenge in the King's voice. A youthful defiance. 'But for that.'

'I know, lord.' Tiberias raised his eyes. 'Salahuddin has been gracious enough to send his physician. He waits outside.'

'He does?' There was barely a flicker of interest in the King's voice. Physicians were no new novelty; a thing to be endured rather than welcomed. But he paused, to stare straight at the Lord Marshal with a fixed glance. 'Does she weep?'

'What? Ah – no. Not-' Tiberias knew that his liege lord had in mind an old memory of the grief-stricken screams of his mother's women. 'Not as you think, lord.' He said kindly. 'She is tired. She thinks overmuch.' Tiberias paused. 'I shall send the doctor in? He will be fatigued, lord. And he will have a weary journey back to Damascus.'

The look did not change. It gazed with an unvoiced reproach at the Lord Marshal – until it wavered as he fell back listlessly against the pillows, the glance looking away to some inward scene beyond the walls of the tent.

Tiberias slipped quietly away after that. He wandered, up and down, like a lost soul amongst the fires of the humble soldiers, the proud freshly struck tents of the likes of Gerard of Ridfort and the other fools, and only when it grew too dark to see the darkling hills surrounding the camp did Tiberias lope at limping pace towards his own tent.

He knew why he walked so late, of course. He could not have borne it, to return so promptly back to Mirrum's share of grief, disappointment. Lost hopes. It would be like watching the death-throes of a twitching moth, papery wings trembling in the light.

By the time he returned, Mirrum had toppled helplessly over the chessboard, scattering bishops and knights helplessly over the ground, cheek etched with the scored lines of the board itself where she had rested too heavily on it. She was nothing but a cloud of frowsy hair and half-curled fingers. Very much like a small child that has cried itself to sleep.

Raymond of Tripoli would never have called himself a sentimental man. He had not the nature for it (or flattered himself he did not) and if he saw any trace of it within himself he hastened to trample on it, resolutely. But as he wearily passed a hand over his tired eyes, he felt sick of the pretence – any pretence, and twitched off his cloak, seemingly by chance, over Mirrum's slumped shoulders.

It would wait until morning. All of it could wait until morning.

Three days of hard riding, at a draggingly slow pace, eventually led them to Jerusalem. Hours of wild thinking – anger, sorrow and disbelief – passed in a raging torrent of silent thought for Mirrum, riding pillion like a half-empty sack of meal behind the Lord Marshal. But by the final stretch of the journey she passed through it into the quiet, calm waters of final acceptance.

Because she understood _why_. Tiberias did not talk of it much; that expulsion of unwanted knowledge seemed to be the extent of his understanding. But –

If that was the burden you bore – and Jesu knew it was a heavy one – how easy, how _tempting_ would it be, to slough that hated self and become the Physician? If by some miracle of existence Mirrum could have been Ammet – pretty, self-assured Ammet with her command and sense of presence – she would have traded places without a second's hesitation. If she hadn't guessed. If she had confessed she had no clue to who he was, that second time... Perhaps she might not have...

The hard thing was that seeing Sybilla, and her strained reaction; associating it with her Physician – the voice like a bolt of velvet unfolding on the stars, the kindness, the humour – made her feel ashamed to call Sybilla mistress. And worse, made her ache to apologise for all those unthinking slurs of judgement, those careless thoughts given voice...

To shrug off the Physician – for she could not think of him as King now – as mere contagion, swaddled manwise? Become like the Patriarch?

Unthinkable.

It was never so hard to return to Jerusalem before. To see the swaying litter with its pale curtains drawn, like a drooping arum lily, and to know that – a mere few feet away as they were from each other – Mirrum would perhaps never see him again.


	32. Chapter 32

Mirrum's return reminded her, in an odd way, of that first sight of Jerusalem. She remembered looking at it from the crest of the hill with Mab, trailing behind in an exhausted world of dust and dirt – but gazing at a white-bleached, blue-tiled Paradise with spires and towers and a world seemingly better – much better – than the one of scorching sand and hot breezes that trickled heat over you as though flailing you into penitence...

Mab had spoken of angels and flaming wings. Mirrum had half-laughed, back then, at his fancy – thinking herself superior to his superstitions.

She was not so sure that he had been wrong now. Mab had been right, in his way. Angels didn't take the form of the frescoes – still, peeling pictures with flaking paint that left little crescents of cracked colour on the floor. Angels could be anything – a pair of wide grey-blue eyes amidst a flurry of orange silk. A small boy playing soldiers upon the floor, spindly legs idly thrown up in the air. Or a voice on the night air, plaiting deep notes with the plaintive cry of a sad flute until it became a silken rope of sound...

Angels weren't the winged creatures of fable. They were tests, sent in people to see how much faith you truly had.

Mirrum seemed to have failed all of them at once.

That, however, was not the least of her troubles on the road back to Jerusalem. What little anonymity she had preserved as a faceless serving woman was torn into shreds as a companion to the Prince of Galilee. Raymond of Tiberias was not known for his affability with women. It awoke stares and vague murmurs.

Tiberias, however, waved it vaguely away with an idle sweep of his hand. 'Bah. _That!_' He said gruffly. 'Jealousy has no faster messenger than Rumour. Of course they suppose what Sybilla... supposed. It's only natural – alas. Believe me – with an army, the worst is that they curse and wish they had the sense to bring their mistresses too.'

'Oh!' Mirrum's face went pale, and then into a deadly crimson flush. Mild jest on so painful a subject as love made her stomach jolt and her eyes dull. But Tiberias had not noticed. He seemed to be in a distracted mood; one that looked inward rather than at present difficulties.

'I suppose they find it odd,' he said thoughtfully. 'Hah! Yes. I suppose they have full reason to wonder about it.' He glanced down at Mirrum, dark eyes pensive. 'Would you have supposed me a well-favoured man, in my youth?'

'My lord?' Mirrum's pebbly eyes widened. This was a horribly embarrassing position – and worse, it was no question asked without an answer. Tiberias looked down to see her response. 'I- I hardly know how to - answer...'

'I thought as much.' Tiberias looked above Mirrum's nodding head before him in the saddle and gazed at the dusty column of soldiers. 'I was a sulky fellow, truth told plainly. Too thin, and with a look as though I had the ague. Man enough in battle, but beyond it? No. Godfrey, Jesu rest his soul, was a handsome devil and reaped the rewards of his charms. I hardly – that is, I – left matters well alone.'

He settled Mirrum more firmly beneath the crook of his elbow, clucking absent-mindedly to the horse.

Mirrum wasn't entirely sure that she hadn't failed another test at this juncture, but she held her tongue. She couldn't think about that now.

I shall go back, she thought fervently. I shall work, and be glad of it, and if any – oh _Miserere mei, Deus –_ chance comes to me to make amends, to ask forgiveness – I shall take it. And if not –

If not...

Mirrum could not think further than _if not_.

* * *

Jerusalem was not entirely what she expected, either. After the long weary journey, Mirrum staggered – wordless – from the Lord Marshal's horse and without looking back, wandered along the familiar pathways – left, right, beyond the close-set stairs like the spiral of a sea-shell, and through the Chinese puzzle-box of rooms towards Sybilla's apartments and the place Mirrum, for the time, called home.

The room was empty. Sybilla was returned – the careless presence of a discarded robe spilling purple reproach on to the floor, and the faint scent of sandalwood, announced that the Princess had been some time already in Jerusalem. It was a lived-in quietness, not the vacant silence of an old room.

Mirrum felt like a ghost on a house she once knew. She wandered towards the tiny room she had shared with Ammet, half-expecting some other girl's bundle there, some other girl with huge eyes and foolishness. After all, she had deserted Sybilla without a word. Who could blame her if she left her servant to her own devices and took a new one?

'_Maman_ isn't here.' A small, familiarly piping voice spoke up from behind her. 'She went out.'

Mirrum turned to see Prince 'Perseus' standing stiffly in the doorway, one toe tracing a fanciful pattern in the dust. His eyes were mutinously fixed upon the ground, not looking at Mirrum, hands balled up hotly into the folds of his tunic.

Mirrum adjusted a smile that was as pale as water. 'I am glad to be home, highness-'

'You stayed away.' Baldwin, it seemed, had inherited his mother's stark habit of challenge. He stared at Mirrum with open hostility. '_Maman_ came back but _you_ stayed away. And you _aren't_ glad to come back. _Maman_ says you're soon to wed and then we'll never see you again-'

Mirrum choked back something that was not quite a sob, and yet to desolate to possibly be a laugh. 'No. No.'

'_Maman_ is wrong?'

'I am not to wed anyone.' Mirrum let her hands fall listlessly into her lap. 'I shall be here a long while yet.'

Prince Perseus turned wide grey eyes full on her with the puzzled, hurt look of a kicked puppy. 'You don't want to go _away_?' he said mournfully, sitting down promptly in the rushes with the air of one with many grievances. 'Maman gives me nothing but lessons now. I don't see why. You know everything anyway when you become King.' He brightened, visibly. 'We could play Thomas a Becket again!' He peered through the thick thatch of his fringe. 'Are you sad, Mirrum? _Maman_ is sad too since you stayed away. She is sad for my uncle-king-'

Quick, rapid footsteps danced impatiently down the passageway. Baldwin brightened. 'Maman is come back!'

'Oh no!' Mirrum looked stricken – she turned as though she would have given worlds to hide; to turn thin and pale so she might blend with the cracked plaster of the wall, vanish into the crumbling mortar of the Paradise-blue tiles. To hide anywhere. Everywhere... 'I – I can't see her!'

'But it's _Maman...'_

Prince Perseus flew in an impatient tumble of arms and legs to his feet, scampering around the door with a look of joy. 'Maman, Maman…' he crowed. 'You came back!'

'Ah, _mon_ petit-' From the squeals it sounded very much as though Sybilla and her little son were twirling around in a circle of unalleviated happiness. 'Come, sirrah –' Sybilla sounded coy, faintly teasing. 'What way is that for a princeling to greet your lady mother? Make your bow as I taught you.'

'Oh!' Prince Perseus pulled up short in his unchecked glee, his round childishly solemn face falling into timid fear of his mother's disapproval, and hastily made a very formal stiff obeisance in the direction of his mother's finery. 'Lady mother, may God keep you this good day…'

'There, enough! Maman merely wanted to see her prince remembered his lessons. Have you practised your writing hand today? I hope you-'

'Yes.' Baldwin said plaintively, and left it at that. He was too impatient to hasten ahead with his good news, like the greedy swallowing of a naked nestling. 'Mirrum is come back, maman!'

A perplexed silence fell in the hallway beyond.

Mirrum dug her nails into the palm of her hand, so deeply it left bloody half-moons like a pinprick of anguish, bowed her head, and squeezed shut her eyes.

It was not that Mirrum _disliked_ her mistress now she knew the truth. Far from it. In a way she understood Sybilla better now. It was as though she had somehow unlocked the key to knowing Sybilla through and through from knowing the Physician, and in understanding the kinship between them, and how different they were, she felt an odd sense of pity for this frightened, beautiful creature with the anguished fingers who could not bear to even hear a whisper of her brother's name.

But Sybilla was too closely identified with her Physician now. Mirrum felt for her own sanity's sake she could not stand there and see the lighter shade of blue-grey shine from her mistress' face without painful comparison – and she didn't want to compare. Nothing could compare.

It was a long while before Sybilla found her voice again.

'Mirrum is…returned, is she?' she said slowly. 'That is good. Maman has her lady in waiting back again.' Mirrum felt the raised reproof in her voice, but the mild sting glanced off her dulled senses. She was proof against such slight barbs as that.

But little Prince Perseus, never quite content, seemed to notice a touch of disbelief in his Mama's voice rather than the questioning edge upon it. He wriggled out of his mother's grip and bolted back towards Mirrum, tugging at her hand. 'She is here! She _is!_' he said insistently. 'She's in here, only she didn't come out- greet Maman, Mirrum!'

Too late. With a rustle of sweet-smelling silk Sybilla had followed her son and stood looking at her maid.

It was not so bad as Mirrum imagined. Sybilla had a faded glow about her that suggested a rekindling of the happy hours of Ibelin in the company of Lord Balian – a tired warmth faded to the dull glow of everyday life. Being free from the watchful eyes of a wraith of a servant girl had done Sybilla good. She was loosely draped in a purple mantle that made it seem as though she had lightly sprung out of bed. Her gaze was unreadable.

Mirrum looked at a pale reflection of the Physician's eyes looking back at her. Not so veiled, she thought. There were no darker flecks in Sybilla's eyes, no gaze that looked clean through to the scrap of human soul beneath…

Sybilla gently tugged Prince Perseus back, pushing him away towards the courtyard. 'Arrange your knights awhile,' she said, not taking her eyes from Mirrum for an instant. 'I have words for my maid.'

She waited until Baldwin's half skipping footsteps were out of earshot before turning to her errant lady-in-waiting.

'I shall be sorry to lose you.' She said bleakly. 'I missed your company. But – there. What must be, shall be. I have not forgotten the loyalty and unswerving devotion you gave to your mistress…'

Mirrum said nothing. A spot of high colour rose on each cheek.

'I am not entirely sure whether to gift you with money or land, you know?' Sybilla spoke nervously, twisting a loop of gauzy purple material between her two hands. 'You are such a strange girl, _petite revenante_. I hardly know what will suit you..'

'I am not to be married.' Mirrum let it out all in a rush. The colour on her cheeks turned white now, mingled with the red, so it looked almost as though she had been slapped. This talk of dowries both shamed and sickened her.

Sybilla looked startled. 'But your troth! The little peddler of medicines and poultices – your _apothecary…_'

'Gone.' Mirrum looked down at the floor. It was no lie, after all. The Physician's featureless shadow was replaced by a brighter, far more painful image. Seeing Sybilla's sympathetic look, she saw no harm in embroidering the lie a little. 'Returned to his …kinfolk. Across the sea. No way of knowing w-where he is or-'

Sybilla came forward in an agitated rustle of purple silk, and, to her pale servant's great surprise, enveloped her in a sudden clutch of womanly fellow feeling.

'I am sorry –' she said, her face shining with genuine compassion. 'I cannot imagine what it would be like if one_ I_ loved left me to return home without a word or a kiss or-' she stopped, caught up in her imagined distress.

Mirrum had the distinct impression Guy de Lusignan was not running across Sybilla's thoughts. But she could hardly fault her there. Guy was away, having remained at a judiciously cautious distance from the returning army and the disgrace of Reynaud. He would return once righteous anger was cooled amongst the silent grieving for the passing of the King. Who would not sneak happiness for a while?

Eventually Sybilla leant back, wiping at her eyes with one hand. 'There! I cannot deny, in a way, I am glad to have my little ghost back. I have no wish to go maid-hunting again now…now there are – secrets.'

'Yes,' Mirrum echoed, dutifully. 'Secrets.'

'You will not be ready yet – not yet. But – Mirrum, when you are-' Sybilla looked away. 'I can find a good husband for you. A kindly one, if nothing else…'Her voice trailed away. 'Do you think me wicked?'

'Wicked?' Mirrum looked up startled, a blaze of pale hair against an ashen face. 'My lady, why should I think you wicked? You are a good mistress and a great queen-'

'But an indifferent sister.' Sybilla said it flatly. 'I saw the way you looked at Kerak. I acknowledge it, freely. I daresay you thought much on the road back from Jerusalem.'

Mirrum froze. Not Sybilla, too – surely…?

'That I did not have the courage to show my love for my brother.' Sybilla's voice was tight with self-loathing. 'What sister, you might ask, does not.' She looked up. 'Sometimes, petite revenante, it is I who am the ghost. Do you think it possible? That the dead can return to peer from our eyes and see our failings? My uncle passed on swiftly. Too swiftly. And my father – cut off, like a dandelion head, and still lost in the midst of grief for what - came to pass. And then Fate strikes at my brother – while he is little more than –' she gestured, speechlessly, in the direction of Prince Perseus, lost in the concentrated murmurings amidst his toy knights and esquires. 'I know you thought me cruel, _petite_ – and I daresay Tiberias still thinks me cruel – but I have slowly lost him, day by day, since he reached his twelfth summer. What is left after that?' She paused. 'How…how is he?'

Mirrum thought on the steadfast eyes, the maimed hand clumsily swaddled in the worn out linen streamer from her sleeve.

'Not well, madam.' She murmured, hands clasped in her lap. But seeing Sybilla look so torn and sad, she suddenly felt the impulse to say something more – to soothe, a little.

'He looks like you.'

'What?' Sybilla looked disconcerted. Seriously so – her eyes widened in something like fear as she looked on Mirrum. But the words could not be unsaid. They hung stiffly in the air between them like empty graveclothes.

'He looks like you,' Mirrum repeated.

'You…_saw_…?' The Princess seemed to have stopped breathing.

'No.' Mirrum said simply. 'I did not need to. Your eyes are the same.'

Sybilla half-smiled. 'I had forgotten that. Our father…' She delicately covered her eyes with the tips of her fingers. 'So you look on kings, do you, petite revenante? What were your thoughts on that?'

'It was from a distance, my lady. And the sun was strong –'

'Not much like the romaunts of the jongleurs, was it?' Sybilla spoke tiredly. 'Kings are not your creatures of chivalry, Mirrum. My son, God save him, may have a better chance at holding our cobweb-thin kingdom together.' She flapped a hand, wearily. 'You may go. I shall rest awhile before table.'

'Yes, my lady.'

'Oh, Mirrum?'

'Yes, my lady?'

'My brother is…returned?'

Mirrum's breath caught hard in her throat. 'His Majesty the King follows more slowly through Jerusalem than we did.' She said aloud, in a carefully neutral voice. 'Tiberias hastened to return me. Yes, my lady. The King is returned.'

'Ah.' Sybilla lowered her eyes again. 'That is all I wished to know. Oh… Mirrum?'

'Yes, my lady?' Mirrum was a silhouette, her fingers gripping hard on the doorframe.

'You did tell him?' Sybilla's voice was high-pitched, and oddly wistful. 'You told him my message? That I _did_ ask how he fared?'

She had not the heart to throw misery in Sybilla' face with the truth. Mirrum was too tired to do anything but let the glib, consoling lie slip from her tongue – 'I did, my lady,' and then hastily patter out of sight and out of mind.

But Mirrum's wandering footsteps did not take her on any of the well-trod paths of errands. No. Her feet took her in a different direction – right here, left there – a sharp turn beyond the light of flickering torches and –

Mirrum was there, again. Staring through fretwork at the King of Jerusalem's forgotten garden.

It must once have been beautiful. That was what added to the sense of disillusionment. Court ladies had dabbled the water with their fingertips, laughing like a glass being struck with intolerable sweetness. There would have been banquets, and life, and laughter, and music; soft lutes, perhaps, and the melancholy harmony of a flute rising to high heaven under a midnight-blue canopy. Sybilla's father would have laughed and drank wine here. Serried ranks of long-dead kings had lived and loved in the garden under the walls of the city of Paradise – and the closest there had been for the present King was a handful of snatched words with a dazed little waiting girl who came like a shy dryad in the night.

The cruelty of the hand dealt to Mirrum's Physician struck home keenly. He had thought she would find out. He had hoped she would not. And there was a tiny flicker of secret, savage pride that, in a world where the slender court ladies of romaunts and song were unreachable, a troll-child had served the deficiency. It might not have been the same as Sybilla's great passion, nor the sordid stories of mistresses found in the prudish chronicles of Benedictines. But there had been – something…

Mirrum's mind might have been otherwise occupied, but her ears were not. They heard the sound of hurried little footsteps, almost noiseless on the patterned tiles, yet curiously…Mirrum flattened herself against a fluted pillar to listen more keenly.

The footsteps were lost. They wandered, forlornly – first one way and then another, and then stopped, before advancing towards Mirrum's hiding place –

She stepped out.

'Why do you follow me?'

Prince Perseus looked up at her with a woebegone expression. He was awkwardly clutching a new toy - a gaudily painted set of knights with strings to move their stick-like arms, which explained the halting nature of the footsteps that followed after. 'I wanted to play.' He said stubbornly. 'And Maman will rest for hours now. There has been no-one to play with for _weeks._'

'I am a little tired to play tonight, Prince –'

Mirrum's weary spoon-shaped face changed its expression mid-way through the tired explanation. It became less confused; smoothed into the calmer face of decision.

'How about a tale, instead?'

The little prince considered this, head cocked on one side, before clumsily dropping the pair of toy knights and shuffling them into a shadowed corner.

'Is it a big one?' he said doubtfully.

'Fairly so.' Mirrum sat down in the shadows, one hand still resting on the beautiful fretwork as though seeking inspiration from the carving and old memories.

'Once, you see, Prince Perseus – There was… a king –'

'There always is,' Prince Perseus interrupted, nodding his small flaxen head at the promise of a story.

'Who ruled a land of…Carbonek. He was the Fisher King because he guarded a great truth of the San Graal's final resting place. And he was…'

'Brave?'

'Yes. But there was more to it than that, highness. All kings have to be brave. Being a king is part of it, I think... No, what was important about this king is that he was a good king, but – flawed. Like everyone. And…' Mirrum racked her brains for the old legend and seized upon it, eagerly. 'One day, whilst hunting, the king chased a pure white deer through the forest and in killing it, it dealt him the Dolorous Blow. It made him…sicken even to death. But not quite, for there was a magic in the wound that kept him living. He was needed to be the guardian for the San Graal and the enchantment could not ignore that.'

'Why did the stag-'

'Because he was the best. The purest, the most honourable of kings. Because the stag was a reminder that all things are not within man's grasp. And because of this, he was brought back in sorrow to his castle by his faithful knights and they kept watch over him until the moment the spell should be lifted by the one to set him free –'Mirrum drew a deep breath. She had been half-gabbling in her moment of wild frenzied creation.

'And by and by, the years went on, and the King waited. He was shut up in the highest room because of the horror that had fallen over the court. And he saw no-one, although he ruled still, and well. Because no-one knew how long he might have to wait until the magic loosed him. But I think… I think the Fisher King was lonely, alone in his shuttered rooms. But he was brave enough to bear it in silence until… until…'

Mirrum breathed deep, closed her eyes so that lids of blue-violet smudge told the tale out in her head. She had not courage to make the next part have a servant girl in it – a lowly, miserable, _stupid_ servant girl in borrowed clothes and poor Norman French and the old traditions of her pagan ancestors swathing her in obscurity.

'A baron's daughter from another country came to court,' she said. 'With dark hair. From France. She knew nothing of the King, or his curse, and the San Graal. The court could not tell of the horror. But… there was a maze planted below the prisoned walls of the King's rooms, and she used to stand there looking up at the stars. And one day the King saw her, and called down to her. The tower was so high she couldn't see who she spoke to, but – they became friends, after a while. And she loved his company as he loved hers, and after a while the pretty dark-haired Baron's daughter fell in love with the beautiful voice of the man in the tower. But she never knew he was the King. Until she learned by chance one day – and then – and then –'

'She found a way to break the curse,' Baldwin said complacently. 'And they all lived happily ever after as King and Queen and...'

'No.' The reply shocked little Prince Perseus into wide-eyed indignation. 'They didn't. This is a different tale. The curse couldn't be broken. The baron's daughter could never see him again, once she learnt the truth.'

'Why not?' Baldwin demanded, shaking his small curly mop furiously. 'Maman's tales don't go like that! Why didn't she go into the maze again?'

'The gates were locked against her when she tried.'

'Why didn't he come down, then?!'

'Why?' Mirrum thought. 'I suppose he… did.'

'And did he explain about the curse?'

'Yes. Yes, he did. He'd tried to keep it from her in case she was frightened and never came again…' Mirrum's expression was veiled in shadow. Little Baldwin couldn't possibly see she was crying. He was too busy cowling mutinously at a tale that didn't follow a comfortingly familiar pace. 'But then he had… to return to the tower.'

'She should have followed him!'

Angels aren't beings. They are tests, in people, to see how much faith you really have. For Mirrum at that frozen moment, a mere grumble from a factious child became an imperious command from a crimson-winged seraphim.

'What?'

'She should have followed him back into the tower!' Baldwin insisted. 'Or… or scaled the walls! Not just give up! That's no story at all!'

He stopped, vaguely astonished as Mirrum suddenly leapt to her feet with amazing energy for a small saddle-weary lady-in-waiting.

'You're right,' she said, breathlessly. 'About climbing towers. You're right.'

Baldwin looked perplexedly after her as she broke into a run.


	33. Chapter 33

Of course, all human endeavour is painfully subject to doubt. Even when inspired by angels. Mirrum had not bolted half a dozen paces amongst the labyrinth of cloisters before she began to falter and think on the lunacy of attempting an audience with a King at such a grave juncture as now. There was no way she could possibly have managed it when all was well. Jerusalem was a different place to the harsh arrogance of England. Mirrum wouldn't not have been allowed to so much as see a _kitchen_ skivvy of the Curtmantle in private, let alone a...a _king_.

She stopped to lean her fevered face against the cool stone, fighting for reason. Maybe... maybe, if there were time enough, she could –

Yes. Think, Mirrum instructed herself. One step at a time. You know the way. It lies past Sybilla's quarters, into the closed part of the palace where you may not go.

She trod the way back like a blind beggar memorising the number of steps to safety. Yes. Three steps up to the left, and then turn about the corner, and there.

The doors to Sybilla's rooms were shuttered, the light within extinguished. Empty. She had had a look of breathless, brief return about her. She had clearly only paused a moment to collect her things before returning to the house of Balian of Ibelin. Mirrum peered sadly through the fretwork of the carved door, as though seeking some other truth. She would almost – almost, but not quite - have preferred Sybilla to stop and ask her what she was doing.

Mirrum shrank from what she had set herself to do. Her chest tightened as though a hand grasped at her vitals, with the sick plunge of seeing the familiar world drop from view. As though she were being borne toward an unknown shore. And with no hope of turning back or knowing the outcome of her journey.

There were no bristling phalanxes of guard. Mirrum vaguely remembered, in past days of indifference, that there had always been dark-clad attendants ushering men of state within, helmeted men closely guarding the gateway to the Fisher King of Jerusalem. She had occasionally wondered at it, but after a while she had come to ignore the men-at-arms as she might troublesome sheep – in the way, unwanted, but something to be ignored.

She wished she had taken more careful note now. Looking beyond, she had no idea if there would be guards within, attendants treading the length and breadth of the royal apartments like mythical guardians.

But the door was not barred.

Mirrum quickly divined the reason why. What reason to guard what was not there? The army had doubtless summoned away the soldiers from their familiar post into the encounter at Kerak.

Hitching up her skirts with the bluntly determined air of a Saxon peasant, Mirrum scurried forward, opening as thin a sliver of the great door as she could, and sliding her gangling frame within. It was done almost without a sound.

Mirrum hardly realised she was holding her breath until she let it out on the other side of the door, cheeks reddened.

Empty, again. A worn walkway of cracked terracotta tiles, pillars seemingly holding aloft the sky in a faded pennant of tired blue and worn pink. Twilight settled now over Jerusalem – gently, with the air of an invalid crawling under the coverlet of night. But even that faint light did not disguise the quiet air of sepulchral quiet underneath the hidden cloister of the King. Mirrum wandered over to the wall, fingers digging into the cracked plaster as she looked down. It overlooked the city and the distant Calvary – the great hills of Christ. It was a view made to inspire philosophy, if, perhaps, a little calculated to awaken a sense of splendid isolation. It made Mirrum look away as though scorched by the sight, dragging herself back to the present. She must find the balcony that overlooked the garden. The rooms there must surely be his. And if nothing, then perhaps I could leave a letter, Mirrum thought soberly. As he did. Although that would be a sad farewell. Hardly better than being alone.

There was a faint aroma of stale smoke – laced faintly with myrrh. The ashes of the braziers perfumed the air still, although they were now unlit. The torches were unlit, too – the grey half-light of dusk had settled upon the palace of Jerusalem. Mirrum had to feel her way by the tiles along the walls, her fingers stretched out to sense whether there was any opening into a different apartment. None – although eventually the corridor branched out into a broader space, dominated by a great statue of a mounted knight, forever smiling his frozen cast bronze smile at a blank wall. Only then, when Mirrum turned a little away from the effigy did she espy the door she sought.

There was only one. A richly broidered curtain was drawn across the space rather than the confining bulk of a door, making the room shiver and tremble with every breath of wind.

Imagine, perhaps, the feelings of a lady in a _chanteur'_s song – a tale of the jongleurs and lay-makers'. She gazes upon a wounded knight, dimly shrouded within the curtains of his bed. The lady must feel a fearful anguish hovering there. What will she see, upon drawing it? A living husband? A pale corse, fit only for the charnel-house?

Thinking on this, perhaps the reader may comprehend a little of Mirrum's feelings at venturing to lift the curtain, like the lady, and enter such a private space as the...the Physician's rooms. What would it be? A deathly mix of death-bed and potion-peddling? A place that spoke of him at all? The smell of stale air and old ashes was stronger here. Close, a little stifling.

Mirrum drew back the curtain, breathed deep the scent of the old burying fragrance, and stepped forward.

It was nothing- and everything- as she had anticipated. Only with a keener sense that this was _real_, not the fearful fantasy of a mind fevered by apprehension.

It was a quiet room. Infused with that same sepulchral stillness. There was something of Tiberias' taste here, too – none of the opulence that crasser nobles indulged in with ivory and gold and jasper. It looked very little like the wild riches described in the chambers of mythical kings. There the forgotten garden sprawled beneath her - a miniature landscape of soft green. It looked very different from above – more distant, like a worlds seen from immeasurable height.

Mirrum also understood how she had never seen him; there were no lamps to illuminate the truth beyond the apartment.

She didn't venture out, to look at the world with the Fisher King's eyes. Seeing the garden lonely would have been too painful. Within, she moved dazedly through a few subtly carven chairs, a table covered with papers...

Mirrum gingerly touched it with the air of an awed pilgrim kissing a piece of the True Cross. Shyly, and then more boldly yet again – liking the sense of the papers stirring against her fingertips like dried leaves in a September frost. Again, and again, the crackle of parchment –

And then Mirrum stopped, frozen, fingers arrested in mid air.

She had not noticed the gaming board, at first. At first glance it looked, after all, very like chess. But Mirrum had lived and breathed hnefatatl. There could be no mistaking the game pieces – the chipped, badly carved wooden knights, the staring face of the old pagan king.

It was her board. _Her_ game. The very same she had left with Tiberias.

What did it do _here_?

It has to be said, Mirrum did her Fisher-King a disservice in thinking of him as a creature more angel than wholly human. Men have their sad fancies too, for all they admit to them less readily than womankind.

The pieces were in play – a handful of knights scattered across the board, with a motley collection of prisoners on either side. Whoever played the attacking army was fighting hard; scarcely nine men remained out of twenty four. They had clustered jealously about the squares of escape for the king, who remained hovering sadly at the edge of the board like a wraith cut loose from his grave.

It was a sight that might have brought the treacherous blurring of sight in a haze of tears, and for a moment Mirrum clutched at the table as the room swam, briefly...

Only to sharpen into a moment of stomach-clenching fear as she caught the sound of a noise splintering the quiet.

There was the distant sound of the door opening. Of hurrying feet. Murmuring voices, growing louder by the second as they approached near.

'Majesty-' There was the soft growl of Tiberias. He sounded weary to the point of tears himself; there was a ragged note to his voice that spoke of strong emotion, quivering on the lip of some unspeakable gulf. 'The journey – the exhaustion –'

'You think... matters of state ... will wait awhile?' The Physician's speech was punctuated by breathy gasps. 'Until I... am _recovered_, perhaps?'

'Majesty...' The chord of pain was no longer disguised; it was blatant. 'Killing yourself through your kingship is not what I wish to see –'

Mirrum did not catch the King's reply to that. She had woken from the shocked trance that she had fallen into at the sound of voices, and cast desperately about for a hiding place.

Jesu, this would be no small matter. She had thought perhaps he would be alone. Fool! He was ailing...

The balcony was impossible. She would break her neck in attempting it. There was not so much as a tapestry to cower behind – this was the East, not the cold north where the thick hangings kept out a winter's draught on a cold November night.

And there was _nowhere _to –

Mirrum dashed into the next room with all the noiseless silence of terror. There was nowhere there, either – no passage into relative freedom, no window, only –

The bed. Christ in His mercy, the bed. There were finely broidered curtains about it, And the hanging of the coverlet obscured a narrow space beneath it – impossible for a grown man to navigate. But for a slightly-built ignorant Saxon chit with a determination fuelled by heart-stopping fear? It did _very _well, and Mirrum curled up in the cramped dust with her kirtle clutched around her knees, for all the world like an unborn babe in the womb.

Thank God she had concealed herself. The voices rounded the corner almost as she twitched her narrow frame under the bed, and, to her deep and abiding dismay, the rounded tones of the Patriarch of Jerusalem accompanied them.

'My lord...' The Patriarch sounded out of breath. 'Out of my way, churl! I desire speech with the King -!'

Footsteps – many, perhaps three or four men – but going at a gentle pace for the sake of the King between them.

'_You..._' Tiberias' voice cracked like a whip. 'At least have the courtesy to let His Majesty's doctors pass, Lord _Bishop_. Instead of braying like a discontented mule.'

'"And in his illness he sought not the Lord but his physicians?"' There was silken devilment in the Patriarch's voice. 'You may prefer to keep your liege lord in a state of sin, my lord of Tripoli, but I come to see to the fitness of the soul rather than crass care for the fleshly state.'

There was a faint, quickly bitten back exclamation from above Mirrum, that suggested the Fisher King lay inches above Mirrum's head. But that was mere background noise compared to the sound that Tiberias made. Mirrum had never heard a human being snarl before. The noise Tiberias made was more akin to a wolf's growl than any rational human being. The blatant insult of the Patriarch... But apparently even Heraclius realised he had gone too far.

'Of course –' he said quickly. 'Forgive me, Majesty. I shall return when you are a little rested, if you think it better...There is much to do...'

Quick footsteps. The Patriarch couldn't hurry away fast enough.

Tiberias' breathing came almost as hard as his masters' – but from sheer rage, in his instance. 'Another word from him and I'd have played Reginald Fitzurse and be done with it,' he said thickly. 'The braggart _whoreson_-'

'Peace.' The King said suddenly. Wearily. 'Heraclius will be beyond my concern, after all. You need have no fear for his plaguing me ere long. You will do yourself harm.'

'That poxed priest can do nothing to me-'

'Except destroy your temper.'

'It was the _way_ he-'

'Peace.' The King's voice said patiently. There was no metallic echo to his words now. He had let drop the mask, for a brief while. He sounded younger; much younger. And tired. A little plaintive. 'Let him wait awhile - and then he may come. He will get no good from it.'

'Majesty?'

'I do not mean,' The King said deliberately, 'to..._confess_... to _him._ I will have no last rites from _him_.'

Even Tiberias stood a little appalled at this. It was close to heresy. It was close to Jacobite doctrine, something Heraclius decried from the pulpit with astounding fervour. Confession was a last hurdle, a final assurance of passing into the next life with one's affairs in order and a soul as neatly arranged as a goodwife's linen press. A _comfort_ that helped take away the sting of death. For a lord to do it was dubious in the extreme – it suggested heresy, sins against Christendom. For a _king _to refuse it?

'My lord...' Tiberias stood uneasy, shifting one foot to the other. 'Surely... perhaps another priest to give the last rites...? Would not that ease you?'

There came a heavy, breathy sigh.

'No.' The voice came quietly. 'No.'

There was an abrupt silence.

'You may send him in now, Tiberias. I am prepared.' There was a crooked smile in the way he spoke. 'I have an armoury of Scripture for my defence, after all.'

'Ay, my lord.' Tiberias' footsteps limped heavily away.

A few minutes passed before the quick hopscotch pace of the Patriarch was heard on the tiles once more. From the lengthy pause before the Patriarch hurried in again, Mirrum made an educated guess that Tiberias had spoken in private to the good Lord Bishop. When he spoke again, she was certain of it. It had lost the edge of barely-concealed contempt to replace it with a condescension so ingratiating it practically dripped oil.

'Majesty...' The Patriarch oozed, sliding into a chair. Mirrum could see his feet tapping nervously on the ground, dancing out his discomfort on the floor. 'Forgive me for disturbing you... now... perhaps I should return later –'

'No.' Mirrum hardly dared breathe. The King's voice was conciliating, but there was a note of levelled steel in it. 'Come, my lord bishop, we neither of us need take much interest in 'our fleshly state', do we?'

The Patriarch did not answer. His feet were stilled, only one of them tapping nervously now.

Mirrum was dazed, confused by her own terror, and crushed into slack torpor by the heat and the cramped nature of her hiding place. She barely noticed that in hard-pressed moments, the Fisher King used his own affliction as a tilted lance to unhorse such hypocrites as the noble Lord Heraclius.

The Patriarch took a careful breath, and then began. His sermon (such as it was) was a short one, and tentative in the extreme. The Patriarch was not used to such duties as this – it was something his less exalted brothers-in-Christ attended to, not _him_. Besides, he was wary of the audience he preached to, in this case. His Paternoster beads rattled between his hands as he sat, fumbling uneasily around 'the comfort of the Lord' with evident reluctance.

There was no comfort in it. There was no sign that the Patriarch believed what he preached, or was earnestly trying to prepare his liege lord's soul for death through any concern on his part. It was a droned formula, flat and mechanical, and as he drew to a pause, there came a shuddering breath from the King.

'You may spare me your sermon.'

'But... my lord-' The Patriarch turned his head – a fraction, at most- just enough to catch sight of his King. He clamped his lips together and turned away. 'Your _confession_, my lord?' he prompted, delicately.

'_Confitebor tibi, Domine, in toto corde meo.'_

Heraclius blinked at the Latin. 'Aha –' he said politely. 'The book of Solomon, my lord?'

'David. The hundred and eleventh psalm. "Lord, I shall confess myself to Thee in my whole heart."' The King's voice was patient.

'Nonetheless, lord –'

'Saint Gregory also says that 'God takes more notice of thoughts than words,' I believe. _Dominus potius mentem quam uerba considerat. _As does Saint Hilary of Poitiers, when he wrote '_Longorum temporum crimina in ictu oculi perient, si corde nata fuerit contempcio.''_

'I –' The Patriarch was full of consternation. Unheard of! Tainted with Jacobite heresy! But he was in no mood to argue the point. His own knowledge of theological matter was somewhat bounded by that of his underlings. He merely shot a shocked glance towards his king – who turned towards his ghostly confessor with infinite weariness.

'I shall confess to God, when I see Him.' He said quietly. 'Not to _you_.'

The Patriarch stared straight ahead at a patch of plaster, mouth pursed into a tight line of anger that he dared not express.

'Leave me.'

There was little conversation that filtered through to Mirrum in her hot, uncomfortable hiding place beneath the hangings of the bedframe. She had scarce been listening, even to her Fisher King. She was too tired. God knew when she could crawl from here now – perhaps she would need to vault the window, after all – break her neck, rather than the disgrace of being discovered. There was nothing to do now but lie with one cheek against the smooth cool of the tiles, and drearily wait for some slim opportunity to escape...

The heat made her drowsy. The fringe of linen obscuring her hiding place seemed to swirl about her, stretching, sliding – until they grew into a great forest of pale trees, through which Mirrum wandered, as lonely as the baron's daughter. The trees led her in teasing spirals, first up, then down, and then finally stood as a teasing barrier to a doorway which she could not pass, try as she would. It was blocked with straggling jessamine.

* * *

In the world of the conscious, Abu Suleyman Dawud stood by in awed respect as Salahuddin's physician left with a carefully blank expression. He had been somewhat surprised that the great man had said nothing, nor asked for help in any particular. But doctors are often jealous of their secrets. _That_ was nothing.

What _was_ something was the discovery of a small, dirty, fair-haired assassin fast asleep beneath the King's bed as Abu Suleyman Dawud stooped to collect up his own humble medicine chest. It looked rather a pitiful spectacle for an assassin –particularly as it was female, and somewhat tear-stained into the bargain. Abu Suleyman Dawud was torn between calling for the guard or merely chasing it from the room with a stout birch rod, as it seemed more beggarly than a likely murderer.

But upon explaining matters to his patient in an aghast whisper at the sacrilege of such a creature profaning the sanctity of the King's chamber, the King took it in a curious manner. It was not for a mere physician to argue, Abu Suleyman supposed (he had quite failed to recognise Mirrum as the accomplice of Ammet, by the bye) – but he was a little indignant, and not a little offended, that he had been ordered abruptly from the room without so much as a word of explanation.

_Al-Khinzir,_ he thought bitterly – but then instantly regretted the thought. It was a jeering, bitter epithet dealt by the ignorant, and unworthy of his position as a physician. Doubtless there was some grave matter at stake. _Politics. _Abu Suleyman avoided politics as another, more corrosive form of plague, infectious about the courts of statesmen. What you did not know could do you no hurt. The Egyptian physician hurried past without a word towards the guard, along the shadowed passageway –

Until a hand grasped hurriedly at his robes and swung him startled into the dark by his collar.

'I would talk with you, brother.' Salahuddin's little physician, his eyes glittering with an odd, suppressed emotion. He looked agitated, his honest face crumpled with shock. 'Consult you, perhaps... on a great matter. A very great matter.'

* * *

Mirrum woke at length, her legs stiffened and numb with cramp. God knew how long she had lain there in an uneasy sleep – her arms protested as she dragged herself into a crouching position, peering frightened at the shadows. They had lengthened considerably since she had closed her eyes – surely it had been a matter of minutes? Was she missed? She uncurled, slightly. There were no attendants. The room was quiet again.

Something, like an echo of a meeting in a maze between the Fisher King in his tower and the fictitious baron's daughter, lightly brushed the top of Mirrum's head as she put her head out to look about her. She froze. It was all so familiar. Like the light touch of a flitting moth.

'You have disconcerted my apothecary sadly,' an achingly familiar voice spoke softly from a little way above Mirrum's head. 'He spoke of a hidden she-devil at first. But then I thought: who else but my dear Dane-Lady, to hide so?'


	34. Chapter 34

Mirrum's words dried up treacherously in her mouth. It had all run rather prettily in her head before; a neat, artistically arranged death-bed scene of touching romance; coupled with a chaste declaration of forgiveness. It might have been a picture drawn in coloured inks set opposite a jongleurs stock-in-trade romance, with music noted down for learning in both song and rote.

Neat. Perfect. _Sickening_ in its own glibly coined phrases.

Where was the inspiration now? Where were the soothing speeches of the lovely baron's daughter in that fanciful tale? The manuscript and its carefully painted picture had whirled away in the face of reality, Mirrum reflected bitterly. No matter how much she built up her guerdoned walls of carefully constructed fantasy, this was beyond the neat mouthings of Norman-French sorrows. The hazily perfect baron's daughter of the story was no more than the gritty dust on the cool tiles beneath her hands – so much chaff blown on a fitful breeze.

The reality of the scene was very different. It was a place where words would not come. Where the world became a sharply focused point of sight and sound intensified – a cartwheel of sensations. The light, the fresh scent of newly lit incense – for the braziers burnt well and overpowered the room with the stifling fragrance of myrrh. It was a world where the rules were snatched away, where the nursery fancies were cut off like a locked door, where the lurch of Mirrum's heart utterly betrayed any semblance of coherent thought with every stagger it gave.

There! She hardly seemed to mind. It was as though she was trapped in a shell of splintered sugar. She was frozen in place like a stiff waxen effigy crouched upon the floor, still transfixed by the fingers moving feebly within her hair.

Mirrum did not move away. But – neither did she advance, or attempt to turn. She had a timid urge to lean a little closer, but she was half-frightened at her own boldness in wanting to do it in the first place, and hardly knew her own mind, let alone what _he _thought... And oh! The old name...

'_I.._.? _I_ am not a Dane-Lady,' she choked out, at last. The old name had stuck in her chest like a scalding apple as he had spoken. It had taken time to swallow and gather her mazed wits together again. 'Oh_...'_

'Ah...' It was a half-breath of a sigh that came a little way away. Untrammelled by the hollow metallic echo of the mask, it sounded less omniscient, less infallible. The voice of someone _young_.

Mirrum, in her blithe innocence, had assumed her Physician to have the wisdom of ancients rooted in him. And he had rarely sounded _grieved_...

The swaddled fingers halted a moment amidst Mirrum's mad troll-child thatch of frizz.

'Well...' the voice began – and then stopped. 'You do not tax me with perjury and falsehood, lady. As you ought.'

'I...' Mirrum's head quivered, a little, and then stopped. 'No, Majesty, I do not -'

'Majesty? For a mere peddler of poultices?' There was a raw edge to the wry mockery in his voice. 'I told you it was my profession. It was an inverted truth, Dane-lady. At best. At worst it was an _unforgivable_ deception for one who deserved far better usage at my hands...'

Mirrum thawed a little from the spell of stiffness; enough to rest her forehead against the coverlet as though kneeling in prayer, rather than crouching in abject terror.

'I am sorry,' she said, sadly. She was in the calm that comes after hiccupping, swollen tears. 'I am a craven fool for not knowing- for... '

'For what?' The King's voice said calmly. It could almost have been a confession again. Almost. _His _calm, Mirrum noticed, even through the desolate sense of her own, was more born out of strength of will than through a natural tranquillity. There was, indeed, an anxious air of tension that infused the atmosphere with a painful edge.

'For the ignorant speeches of a weak-minded minion with as little thought in her head as there was wit in her mouth!' Mirrum said hotly, with venomous self-loathing. Had she been in a fitter frame of mind, she might have refrained from this; a sickbed was hardly the place for her to slake the burning of her shame. But she had relived every careless remark, every idle thought spoken aloud, and remembering their conversations on the _King_ – to _him! _Fisher Kings andtrite, coarse, unfeeling reflections on the light kings of old had rang in her ears like a jeering Matins bell all the way back from Kerak.

He laughed at that. It was a young man's laugh, no longer given an unearthly second voice, and for a moment Mirrum was almost outraged. But then it dwindled into a harsh croak, and a choking gasp.

Mirrum, alarmed, tried to turn her frowsy head – and would have done ignorant of the consequences but for the sudden convulsive tightening of the fingers in her hair, as though to say 'No. Enough.'

'My lord?'

'No lords here,' The King said harshly. 'Nor majesties, nor kings. I am grown used to the Physician. Let me play the play out a little longer.' Mirrum could hear him shift a little against the bank of pillows. 'Tarry a little, Dane Lady. In truth,' and the teasing note was plaited amongst the low notes of his voice again, 'I am half-minded to call back Bishop Heraclius, and confess to harbouring innocent maidens beneath my bed. Could you perhaps call that mortal sin? I would like to see his countenance as he tried to absolve me...'

Mirrum, remembering the nervously dancing legs, laughed too. But dutifully. She was still recalling with some pains her own unfeeling jokes on honeysuckle beards.

'Come now, you laugh mechanically, Dane Lady.' The King said gently. 'Are you afraid to laugh a little? No need...'

The tension fell again. Sharp, like a hot knife melting wax, and seemingly shearing the air itself. Mirrum's words had run to a trickle of incoherent mutterings.

'This will not do.' The voice from the bed said decisively. 'Are you afraid? There is no need to be coy, lady...'

'I am _not_ afraid,' Mirrum said emphatically. 'I was not when I thought you –'

'Ah, I know _that,'_ He said, fondly. 'It takes a rare woman indeed, knowing the truth, to then conceal herself in the sickroom of a leper merely for sake of some speech with him. But...' he hesitated, 'are you brave through knowledge of what you do, or through ignorance?'

'I-'

'_Are_ you afraid? I- shall think no less of you for speaking honestly.'

'No.' Mirrum said simply. 'I think I was before – and if I had known when we first met, I would have been wary. But not _now...'_

'No?'

'No. Not now.'

There was a pause. The fingers that had been gingerly moving through Mirrum's hair withdrew, the coverlet dipped and rose as he stirred. Mirrum turned –

'_No._ Wait a moment, Dane Lady. I-' There came the dim whisper of cloth against cloth. Mirrum stayed as she was, straining her eyes almost into her skull to see a dim, pale figure extend a translucent arm and hastily grasp at something left discarded...

'There.' The Physician's voice said soberly in her ear, the metallic echo of the mask whispering words back again. 'Forgive me, but I put it aside only in moments of –ha – leisure.'

She did not miss the sardonic note there. But Mirrum was glad to turn round and look on him at last.

He looked a little better than he had in the heat and dust of their last meeting. No longer merely an exhausted set of animated grave-clothes with a burning determination supporting the wearied flesh within. He sat up a little, propped amongst a veritable bulwark of cushions, and the Apollo-like countenance was turned towards her with its eternal smile, one swathed hand still outstretched towards her over the coverlet. Set amongst the candles illuminating the dusk he became an awe-inspiring sight. No crimson-winged seraphim could ever have moved Mirrum to the _Miserere_ after that. Any other king, temporal or spiritual, would have left but a hollow impression on anyone.

Mirrum clumsily swayed into an upright kneeling position, clinging gingerly to the coverlet as she ordered her stiff knees and ducked her head.

'How now, kneeling? To me?' He started from the bank of billows sharply, as though stung. 'No more kings, Dane-Lady. Please. I entreat you. You never knelt to your Physician yet. Why do so now? After all, I am not _quite_ dead yet.' He spoke almost dryly – although it was a feeble attempt at the old humour. Mirrum was never entirely sure, but it seemed for a moment the voice wavered a little over 'Physician.' As though the old name choked him as much as it did her. 'I told you wisdom was a terrible thing, Mirrum. You are far graver than you used to be when talking of the King's great hunts and his powdered honeysuckle beard...'

'How can you jest about it, Phys –Physician?' Mirrum looked up, a certain suspicion of wetness about her cheeks again. 'Doesn't it-'

'Does it sting me, a little?' As far as Mirrum could read within the hollows of the mask, he seemed to have anticipated her question with a certain patient resignation. 'Ah, _that._ I...' He patted the coverlet. 'Would you sit beside me for a little while, Mirrum?'

No Dane-Lady now. That appeal touched Mirrum keenly. He addressed her as one soul to another, and she wordlessly rose up, a tearstained wraith, and sat gingerly perched on the edge of the bed.

There was no denying that it _was_ harder to sense his mood. The burdened knowledge of what had always been free and easy before lay between them like a silent ghost. But it was a changeable shade, and Mirrum was so moved by the quiet nature of his plea that she softly clasped the fingers of the motionless hand – so that he saw, and understood.

It pleased him; the soft grey-blue of the veiled eyes seemed to burn a little brighter. But his gaze settled into abstraction at last.

'I suppose I must say I have lied before God,' he said, at last, the cowled head nodding drowsily on the banked cushions. 'When I dismissed the 'comfort' my good lord Bishop offered me. You saw what passed between us, I daresay?'

Mirrum nodded.

'I thought you might. Well. I lied. I said I meant only to confess to God. My whole confession is for Him, yes – but a very little of it I make a gift to _you_.' The King said plainly. It was said with stark truth, but there was a flavour of uncertainty in it. 'May I repose trust in the ghostly comfort of my Dane Lady?'

He settled back. 'My plain answer to your question is: no, Dane Lady. It does not sting me as it might have done... once. In my green youth, mark you.' he added, simply, with a smile in his voice. 'I flatter myself I am almost indifferent to it now.'

'You are not so very old now!' Mirrum retorted. 'Sybilla is but six-and-twenty, and –'

'What? Near four and twenty is a ripe old dotage for a king!' They were both lightly jousting in jests now – juggling with glass that very nearly pricked them both with the sharp sadness of the truth. 'What else must I look forward to in living to a greater age? Assassination? Wars and wounds and gout – and the palsy,' he added, plaintively. 'I shall not miss the way Tiberias winces as he walks, poor gentle.'

'From his old wound?'

'From the twinges of old age, my ever-romantic Dane Lady. He is past forty...'

'Oh...'Mirrum considered the sharp angle of the mask within the linen shroud, the hooded eyes that fluttered somewhere between waking and dreaming. 'You say... you were _almost_ indifferent to it, Physician. What of your ...youth?'

'What? Oh. A revolt,' he murmured slowly, as though retracing a memory. 'I could be – ungovernable, when the fancy took me – No, indeed. I am easily unmanned by anger. I confess to the sin of pride, of cruel passion, and of coveting my fellows, yet... this...it all seems quite distant to me now. Like a waking dream of a time.' The King spoke placidly. 'We've jogged elbows all this way, Death and I. God forbid I should look on him with fear, _now_? We have too great a respect for each other's company! God knows it is a fearful thing to leave this world in fright. I would rather leave it with a jest, among... friends.' He turned his head, so he could cast another unflinching gaze at Mirrum. It was so direct Mirrum could not bring herself to look elsewhere, as was seemly. 'But I will not say I do not have regrets. I have much to own to myself that was not done... well...' The eyes blinked.

'I know,' Mirrum said. For want of anything better to say. It sounded abrupt, cruel at first glance. 'There is much I own was wanting in – in wit and courtesy, too. A- and I am glad you did not take my fooleries ill, or my fancies –' She struggled to find anything to fill the terrible gulf of silence. 'I-'

And then it came to her. Paper, burning under the blood-fevered night of an Ibelin sky. Words scattered agitatedly about on the paper.

'You sent me a –a story,' Mirrum stammered. 'An old Breton lay, you said, composed "_at the first Taking of the Cross..."_

The troubled blue-grey stare within the tranquil expression of the Apollo face glowed in recollection.

"_It was told to me a long time ago – too long ago." _He finished quietly, closing his eyes as though reading the words pressed on his eyelids. 'Ay, my Dane-Lady, I remember...'

'You said... you said that you had learnt what it meant to be _Le Chaitivel,_ the Unhappy One,' Mirrum said all in a rush, rocking backwards and forwards as she fiercely tried to collect her thoughts. Let her think, let her think... 'Because of the lady. _The lady whose great grief_ _separated them like a wall...'_

'_-and he could no more lay hold of her than he could a ghost.' _The words were more of a strangled sigh on his part, but it spurred Mirrum on into unusual boldness.

'That isn't true! It isn't, Physician. You are... are not the Unhappy One...'she paused. 'Or at least, you are not the Unhappy One alone. I always thought how cruelly ignorant the lady of the tale was, not to _see_, to grieve for all of them when one still remained who _deserved_ kindliness. Grief isolated the unhappy knight, because she could not _understand_ his sorrow was of a different kind to hers...'

Mirrum stopped, confused. But she pressed on bravely, trying to find her way out of the maze. 'That is why you told it to me, wasn't it? Why you wrote... you knew I would learn who you were. And you did not want me to lose sight of the Physician in grieving for you as King...'

No. That _wasn't_ all. And Mirrum knew it, as well as he did, the unspoken sadness.

_He could no more lay hold of her than he could a ghost..._

The 'ghost' swayed slightly as she sat absently at his side. The day had not been kind to Mirrum. She had passed through too much despondent passion to admit of calm without near unconsciousness, and there was a flushed, feverish look to her that rendered her in scarce better case than her Physician.

'I am left to myself,' Mirrum muttered abstractedly, suddenly seeking permission to remain. 'Sybilla is gone to seek Balian of Ibelin, and – there is naught left at hand for me...'

The King shook his head, musingly. 'Tiberias will seek for you,' he remarked. 'He expressed a proper concern for you. And indeed I think you might be better in his protection. I have much to accomplish over the days left to me, Dane Lady. Death has enough respect for my office to allow me a few month's respite, but it will take much...'

His voice trailed away. Mirrum, taking it as a summary dismissal, began to gently extricate herself from the hand she still clutched, mutely turning the thick swaddling to her lips in an obeisance she had often used to Sybilla.

'Take care –' he spoke anxiously, raising his head in a sudden start of vigour. 'The –'

'My grief is not a wall,' Mirrum said swiftly – and with a smothered violence that almost frightened herself. 'And I would remain, my lord. Even if you send me away.'


	35. Chapter 35

Raymond of Tripoli, Lord of Tiberias, Prince of Galilee and half a dozen other, worthless, paltry names of little worth, trod the boards of his apartment with no light foot, and certainly with no light heart.

It is hard to be the wall between Pyramus and Thisbe, yes – especially when the confidante wall is not a creature of stone and mortar. Much as Tiberias had often flattered himself that he was impervious to arrows of that kind, much as he had plumed himself on being cemented by reason and having foundations of hard-headed philosophy – he was, at root, a kindly man, and the air of desolation on the journey to Jerusalem had bitten deep. Tiberias was more disposed to find solace for lachrymose temperament in a wine flagon than ever before – and yet something of self-disgust forbade that escape.

He paused.

Young Baldwin, Jesu save his poor soul, was a stripling. Sybilla would eagerly and gladly be regent, true – but it would be Guy the fighting man and champion of the Templars that would be looked to. Sybilla would have a hard time jousting with her husband for the rule of Jerusalem. And what if she prevailed? What then? The time for peace was already shattered – a weak, insubstantial ghost remained in its place. Salahuddin would courteously wait the little while it took for a fellow king to die, but it would be a different matter once –

The frowns etched in Tiberias' forehead deepened, drawing his brows harshly together until his face was a mere crumpled page of tortured inner workings. He pinched the creases as though to snuff out the inevitable thought that followed 'once', turned instinctively towards the scribe's desk, the waiting stirrup-cup of wine, and then with a muttered imprecation hurled it away into the empty hearth.

Instead he stood, breathing hard, as though instead of being made of stone, the world about him had turned to granite instead, and he in turn was a desolate wanderer of flesh and blood in a hard and featureless landscape.

It was not entirely borne out of loyalty for his King. Tiberias had seen three kings come and go with little emotion, and doubtless would see a fourth. He had been loyal – suitably grieved for a passing of a monarch, yes, but with a cautious air of mental preparation for the new. Baldwin – that is, the King, was dear to him in a near way; something like a son, and something not a little like an enshrined saint, and such a thing doubtless gnawed his heart, but –

It was not so much _that, _either. It was _change_ that was that made Tiberias' banner droop, _change _that made his soul turn sick and pale within him. It was the way his established world broke into pieces, skipping into mocking fragments of what had been. There had been wars aplenty yes – and enough foolish kings to fuel the fires of conflict. But... a world ruled by Guy, and _his_ like? An oath of loyalty sworn to Guy was to cry out against loyalty, love, respect – to cry out against the very nature of the oath altogether. It would place Tiberias in an entirely false position – and Tiberias was grown _weary _of false positions. Playing the intriguer was a younger man's game...

Godfrey, _resquiat in pace_, Tiberias thought ruefully, had all the luck. Even in death. He had managed to slip quietly away before the standard of Tiberias' beloved Jerusalem had fallen, like the walls of Jericho before a single blast of Gideon's trumpet. He had died knowing the beauty and subtlety of life in the East glowed for him, ripe and whole as a harvest moon.

Only the old were left to perish in these lingering days...

It may be imagined these thoughts were not very conducive to cheer; indeed, Tiberias slowly bowed under the remorseless masonry of thought he piled upon himself like a second Samson crushing himself beneath the ruins – from pacing angrily to every beat of his thoughts, to slowly dragging his weight back and forth, and finally to sagging into a chair, exhausted by black despond. The room was bare, now he looked at it. Bare, hard, and lacking any of the niceties. Rather like himself. Godfrey's shambles at Ibelin looked better than this – but then, Tiberias reflected wryly, Godfrey had always been closely surrounded by pretty, witty, waiting women. The niceties had doubtless not been his _own_ taste...

This, by contrast, was stark and cold, like the truth. It was the room of a man who did not live here; merely passed through on his way somewhere else. Slept in it, occasionally ate in it – but who did not _live _in it. It had the bleak Spartan nature of some ascetic sour-faced Franciscan, or perhaps - even – an empty room, waiting for a master who never came...

Bah!

Tiberias pushed the wine flagon from him a little further, nudging temptation behind him, and mused a little while on the events of Kerak. It could not have gone but ill; even Tiberias had the wit to see _that_. In both senses of the word. The battle had been merely postponed.

The business of the pale child, too. That had gone ill. Tiberias never wished to be in such an uncomfortable position again, sandwiched between two burdens of grief, and quite unable to relieve either...

A gentle rap came from without . No matter. Tiberias was too dispirited to care, and he ignored it. The fool squire should have had wit enough to let well alone at this hour...

But the knock had a harmonic very unlike the perfunctory rap of an idle esquire. On the contrary – it was nervous, but nonetheless determined to be heard, and as Tiberias rose with a muffled exclamation, the creature actually had the audacity to open the door without waiting for command or refusal –

It was the little apothecary of Salahuddin who peered short-sightedly about the room, good-natured face crumpled like wasted parchment.

'He is not here. Perhaps we should wait –'

His anxious eye caught sight of the Prince of Galilee, sitting at the table as though he were carved in stone rather than a mobile flesh-and-blood mortal man. He reared back at the grim expression etched on milord's face. 'Ah! My good lord –'

'Present, as you see, sir leech.' Tiberias spoke curtly. His diplomatic instinct had stopped short at the muffled profanity that had been on the verge of escaping his lips, but he looked much askance at the physician with a blooming suspicion that would not have gone amiss in Gerard of Ridfort, curse his Templar hide. 'And what brings the great Salahuddin's apothecary to my rooms under cover of darkness at dead of night? For believe me this would look ill to any other of the Court –'

'Lord Tiberias, we talked much together before we ventured to consult you at so late an hour.' The measured tones of Suleyman Dawud made Tiberias' eyebrows lift at this strange turn of affairs. Tiberias held a distant yet respectful regard for the old Egyptian as a fellow of the old court of Amalric – very nearly as old as he was. The very presence of Suleyman Dawud was a surety in itself. But why...?

Tiberias' curiosity over-rode his grief, for the moment. He rose, beckoned his unusual nightly visitors in, and

then bolted the door behind him. Raymond of Tripoli was no fool - his position was already vulnerable. The old malicious rumour that his sympathies lay other than with Jerusalem had torn through the Court like a poisoned desert wind – the seeds of which lay in Guy, no doubt. Guy was idle waiting for his consort's crown. And he had no love for Tiberias. To be seen to entertain "Saracens"- one from Salahuddin's own camp, no less – would be a fatal gesture.

It was thus that Tiberias' attitude was one that held more caution than courtesy to the clustered physicians.

'What is it that requires such secrecy?'

'Naught but –' Abu Suleyman Dawud looked grave. 'Something I had not thought to look for, Lord. I was hasty –'

'Nay, not hasty,' interjected the little apothecary quietly. 'But... you do not have as much time left with your liege lord as I could have wished...'

Tiberias stared. 'I do not see your meaning.'

Suleyman Dawud spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. 'My Lord Tiberias, you are as familiar with the subject of the sickroom as I am. You thought this would be the fever ... a brief respite of a six-month at least before the-'

Tiberias waved a pained hand in the air, calling for silence before the physician could pronounce 'death' . The fevers would always have been the end. Of itself, the leprosy was a slow tyrant; a maiming thing, and a thing that cut short the thread of life to a hands breath of pitiful existence – but not a destroyer. The fevers were the true danger. There was no defence in an already tottering human foundation such as the King. 'Ay?' he said sharply. 'What of it? The exertion has brought on the fever?'

'_Yes_, but –' Abu Suleyman Dawud cast an appealing look at his confederate, who came to his aid at once. There was a raw edge to the Prince of Galilee's voice that wavered dangerously. 'The journey back to Jerusalem – in the litter – it...'

'I fear there may be some... internal injury,' Salahuddin's physician said simply, his eyes dark. ' It was a punishing road, and from my examination of your King, there is some difficulty – a few of the signs are there of – broken ribs, my lord.'

Tiberias' shoulders sprang back , taut as a bent bow, and very nearly as stiff. He said nothing.

'I have done what I can, my lord,' the little apothecary continued, into the long silence. 'They may mend; I cannot tell what rest and the will of God may do. But...'

'_**But**_...?'

Abu Suleyman Dawud spoke. 'There is... _less_ hope than there might have been, my lord.'

Tiberias' hands groped at empty air, sightlessly.

'Tell me...'

'Ay, my lord?'

'How much time is there? How much – until...?'

Both physicians shook their heads.

'Prepare, my lord.' Salahuddin's physician said soberly. 'For what is necessary.' He bowed his head. 'I tarry here too long. I have left what medicines and poor relief I can offer with your good doctor here – with some few instructions...'

He looked enquiringly at the defeated shoulders before him.

'My thanks to you,' Tiberias said hollowly. 'My knights can offer you escort from the city a little way on the road to Damascus –

'I thank you, no. I have kin leaving the city to journey eastward - I may safely travel with them to my master.' The physician paused. 'You may have need of your knights ere long, my lord. The winds of change are no kindly breezes.'

Suleyman Dawud remained standing alone, in the harsh emptiness of Raymond of Tripoli's apartments, long after the physician had departed.

Tiberias himself had collapsed, rather than sat, upon his chair, staring at a future that breathed calamity into his face.

'So the end comes,' he said, blankly. 'I thought I could be unmoved by it, sir leech. I thought I could stare down the inevitable by an air of studied indifference. How wrong I was...'

'Some truths are... hard, my lord,' the doctor said gently.

There seemed nothing else left to say. The waste of hard truth had swept aside all speech.

Tiberias roused himself, with a visible effort.

'I must go to him,' he said, getting up with a grimace of pain. 'I should...'

'Ah... my lord-' Abu Suleyman Dawud had just recalled the small, dirty-faced creature he had encountered. 'My lord the King is engaged with affairs of –ah, state at present.'

'Ay? What affairs are these?'

'I scarcely know, my lord –' Suleyman Dawud ducked his lofty head. 'Perhaps my Lord Raymond had better attend to his majesty...'

It was with no light heart that Raymond of Tripoli bent his footsteps towards the King's apartments. But he was much surprised to hear the quiet sound of laughter.

Laughter?

Oh, it wasn't the laughter of merriment. Merriment would have been a grotesque noise to Tiberias then; harsh - unnatural like the harsh peal of a newly cast bell. It had the soft quiet note of introspection in it. But it was the soft laughter of youth, even if it was tempered with a little sadness, and it made him stop in his tracks.

The pale child was there.

Tiberias leant gingerly forward in the shadows of the doorway, a silent outline. The dim translucence of the curtains showed a curious scene. It took Tiberias a moment to fully understand it.

The pale child sat upon the sickbed of the last great King of Jerusalem – not gingerly, as might the old hypocrite Heraclius, but freely, head nodding drowsily against a bedpost, her whole body slack and loose-limbed with the weariness of spent emotion. On the other side, propped awkwardly amongst the bulwark of pillows like a discarded puppet, lay the King, head turned to one side. Yet neither of the pair seemed lacklustre; indeed, the girl-child displayed an animation that belied her forlorn looks. Occasionally a smile would cross her face as she dipped her head, or cast her eyes downwards at one clasped hand –

Which held another inside it. Yes. Mirrum held one clumsily swaddled hand in her right, whilst the other softly beat time - as though to an old song - with Mirrum's left hand on the coverlet. But for that slight link, there was the chastest distance between them in the world – but...

But for that. The slight contact that announced redemption and forgiveness made Raymond of Tripoli feel all the more keenly that the moment ought not to be broken.

Yet he could not break from the shadows to slip away, somehow. There was something arresting in being a silent observer ...


	36. Chapter 36

Sybilla had not stayed for table, as she had originally intended. She had _meant_ to stay behind, as a dutiful mother. And she was a future queen mother – a creator of destiny. There were a thousand preparations to make; she should appear at the Royal table as a gracious figurehead of impending change – a symbol of benevolent new rule. She should already be instructing her son in the rhythms of the ceremony, the ponderous weight of responsibility...

Destiny. Yes. But if that were so, then Sybilla could not , as yet, shape it between her fingers. And the very thought of trying to mould so stern a material frightened her so much she had scurried to the stables with scarce a thought of anything but _escape_...

Virgin forgive me, Sybilla prayed silently within her head, I am not my mother. I hardly know how to _be_ a mother. How am I to be a queen and a regent? How am I to wait for... the - the _end_ of one thing and then begin anew?

And Virgin forgive me for where I go now, instead of to my duty as a mother...

It is interesting to note that even in thought, Sybilla sprang back as though repulsed from the word 'wife.'

Her favourite mount was still fatigued from the long road back from Kerak – but that suited Sybilla's mood well. She felt in need of blissful anonymity tonight, and to take a different horse and merely to _ride_, in the twilight, towards self-abandonment... What better cure could there be?

I want life, Sybilla thought fiercely. I don't want the long sorrow and the weary waiting. I want life, while I can still seize it. Life, and love, and how to forget...

_How to forget..._

There was no silvered glass in Balian's house in Jerusalem. There had never yet been a mistress of Ibelin. The thought of such things would never have entered Godfrey's head whilst he lived, and certainly had not passed through his progeny's mind, either. Sybilla had to use the soft, vague outline of herself she could find in a settled bowl of water, like a sorceress anxiously scrying the future in the half-light. It was not yet dawn.

Sybilla looked.

A wraith stared back. Not a colourless, harmless wisp, like Mirrum, a drifting cloud of submissive insubstantiality. No, it was a _drained_ creature, chalk-white, with huge concentric rings of purple swelling her eyelids. The eyes were holes through which a thousand reproaches needled, the hair a shadow against the sunlit wall...

Sybilla dragged her eyes away, frightened, and then cast a quick glance over the motionless shape of Balian beneath the sheets. She couldn't tell whether he was awake or no. Probably not. Balian was a calming presence. His own steadiness gave Sybilla the space to find herself again. Abstractedly, she moved away, and then, wandering back again, splashed the _thing_ out of existence, laughing (a little too much?) at her own folly. Folly! That was all it was. The old ghosts

were dead, the conventions of Court mocking shadow puppets on a blank wall. Sybilla could wallow in utter freedom for two, maybe three days more.

But what happens, Sybilla wondered bleakly, looking at the shower of crumpled linen, the discarded clothes on the floor, when the dream ends? When I return?

* * *

Life within the court of Jerusalem had become a hushed affair; a place of softened voices and muffled footsteps, guarded within a shell of almost preternatural quiet. Straw was laid down in the courtyards close to the royal apartments, so that the continuous jangle of horse bridles and armour should not jar the peace accorded a dying king. Servants walked with eyes cast down, and whispered together anxiously in corners – like night insects. Fatally fascinated.

Tiberias was disgusted by it all, and showed as much in the involuntary flaring of his patrician nostrils whenever he caught sight of the squires in a buzz of unhealthy interest. It had been much, he remarked, as it was now –back when Almaric had gone to his final reward. It had been of short duration then. Almaric had gone in haste. This was _different_.

Mirrum's life was one of uneasy inactivity. She could not serve Sybilla until Sybilla – well, _presented_ herself to be served – and not even God knew where Sybilla was _now_. No. Actually, God probably _did_ know where Sybilla was, because Mirrum spent most of her nights fervently praying her mistress would return from Balian of Ibelin's Jerusalem house. _Anything_. Anything for something to do, some mind-numbing task to put off the dreadful air of _waiting_. As the days dragged by Mirrum found herself creating small fantasies for herself – fancying a linen shift needed washing (for Sybilla would return today), a perfume bottle that needed filling (For her mistress would return tomorrow!)

Well. It kept the suspicions of the Court at bay, at least, Mirrum told herself pathetically. They might think Sybilla still here, close-shuttered in her room and idly whiling away the hours in lazy solitude. And it kept her hands occupied.

Sometimes Mirrum tried to scribe, just so her fingers would remember the feel of a reed pen between them. Nothing truly arduous - a little copying, at best. But the words skittered away from her. Catullus was meaningless, the French lays made her eyes sting and her heart ache - and the old tales of her grandfather seemed weighty and stiff with the dull syllables of the old tongue. Mirrum had thought in nothing but Norman-French for so long she had almost forgotten how to _think_ in her native language...

It kept her hands occupied, yes. Just not her mind.

Mirrum had not seen the Phys - _the King_ since the night after his return. He was shut up in his rooms, lords busily scurrying in and out like ants clutching papers and carved chests. It was as he had said so wryly – whilst The Lord of Bones had enough respect for a king's office to stay his hand a little while, it would take much arranging to see that the kingship continued seamlessly on – a smooth river of authority, and all falling to a little boy who ate bread and milk with a spoon and built imaginary worlds in a tuft of grass.

Mirrum hadn't gone to the garden since then. He would summon her when he wished to see her now there was no need for the pretence of the apothecary-who-never-was, and Mirrum did not like to press him. Too many people must be pressing him for time. And time was something that-

Mirrum fitfully threw down the gown which she was darning with a cry of impatience. It was thrice mended, twice let-out at the seams, and in her abstraction, Mirrum had been darning a perfectly sound stretch of fabric. The actual tear sagged emptily near the hem. She couldn't have been in a worse temper that day.

I shall walk, Mirrum decided. I shall walk, and think of other things, and when I come back my head will have cleared. The change of air would do her good – there was beginning to be a staleness about Sybilla's chambers. The cold smell of absence.

Straying from the familiar beaten track of her duties made Mirrum realise how long it had been since she had little to do but wander. Outside the familiar round of Sybilla's apartments, the garden, the chambers of my Lord Tiberias, it was as though she had stepped into a different _world..._

The ritual of banquet had been disrupted in the light of the King's convalescence. Nobles dined late – if they dined at all. Often it was left to the squires to pillage a quick meal from the kitchens, and the echoing courtyard of painted tiles and fragrant pavilions had been left empty. Neglected. As Mirrum peered gingerly through the doorway, it bore a horrible resemblance to the forgotten garden...

Mirrum turned to go, but as she did, a faint thread of plaintive chant caught her ear. A slender loop of sound, the cadences lifting and falling in the familiar call of a French _chanson_. It sounded a little like the great _Chanson de Roland..._ but was it? It sounded _like_ it, true – but the words flowed _differently_, in stops and starts – as though the words were being tested hesitantly on the air, rather than rote-learned.

Mirrum couldn't help it. She walked towards the voice.

It was the Dove.

Mirrum had distantly glimpsed her at table; a girl of middle height, slender as a dryad, and with a cloud of soft brown hair. The Court Poet. She often had close speech with Sybilla. That was when Sybilla still smiled her light smile, before the single-minded fever of love had overtaken her. She used to coax the Dove into the sad Breton laments of Tristan and Yseult, sometimes even urging her into fresh songs. New ones.

Mirrum had never seen the Dove close to – Mirrum's position at court was a very humble one in relation to a _chanteuse_. Besides, she was a titled gentlewoman. She was the Lady...Audemande, wasn't it? Yes. Audemande. Lady Audemande de Vinceaux. Mirrum had momentarily forgotten any name for her but the Dove.

The Dove was seated, a few sheets of bound manuscript held loosely in her lap. She was frowning a little, occasionally pausing to call out a few notes of song. Something about it did not please her – it showed in her face, the taut way she hesitated before looking down at the manuscript.

Mirrum thought it beautiful. She envied anyone the ability to make shining ropes of tales; to be able to look at a sea of expectant faces and let the notes of love and strife wash over them. The closest Mirrum had ever come to that was in a bastard mix of French tales told to a little boy who didn't understand something she was trying to explain to _herself._

But then again, it would be unpardonable rudeness for Mirrum to be caught eavesdropping, no matter how lovely the song was. She coughed, and walked forward a few paces – as though she were merely passing through on another errand.

The Little Dove's head snapped up in sudden consternation, hugging the manuscript close. 'Why – oh! It's you...'

'I'm sorry if I startled you, madam –' Mirrum began, dutifully, only to see that the dark brown eyes were smiling warmth at her, even in her obvious abstraction at being disturbed. And she had not said 'Oh! It's you' as a courtier might had said it. She had said it as though she considered Mirrum an _equal_...

'No matter.' The Little Dove leant forward, tucking a sheet of paper away within the loose boards of the manuscript. 'I come here for privacy. It is often quiet, and I cannot always stay still when I...write. I need to pace out the words...' She broke off. 'It is often quiet here... now, that is.' She said quietly. 'It would not be like this unless –'

'The King, milady,' Mirrum said, bobbing into a shuffling curtsey, her voice unnaturally high. 'Yes, milady. I should be attending to my mistress –'

'That might be a little difficult,' The Lady Audemande said simply. Not with any sarcasm, or irony. Merely stating the case. 'I believe Sybilla has spent her time elsewhere for the past four nights.'

'I-' God's bones. This was ten times worse than Amalric's hearty Teutonic double entendres, because there was no wriggling out of it. Outright denial would show she was a hypocrite. You couldn't evade the statement; silence meant compliance.

'I am sorry,' Audemande said, looking at Mirrum. 'I have offended you. That was indiscreet. You name is Mirrum, isn't it?'

'Y's, m'lady,' Mirrum murmured pinkly. 'That is, I-'she sagged. 'I haven't fooled anyone, have I? Pretending to run errands for her...'

Audemande's brown eyes gazed kindly at Mirrum. 'It was an action of loyalty and friendship to her,' she said. 'Like the maid in _Guigemar, _who shielded her mistress in her amours from her cruel husband, even in discovery...' The poet's voice had fallen into the gentle rhythms of the song. She broke off and hummed a snatch of it, smiling at Mirrum. 'These things inevitably come out, Mirrum. Sybilla ought to be glad her servants are so kind.'

Mirrum was taken aback. 'Th-thank you...' she stammered. 'I... I –I think Sybilla ought to be glad that the Court has a _chanteuse_ like you,' she said, in a sudden rush to return the compliment. 'The song you were singing, milady...'

'Oh!' A faintly self-conscious look crossed Audemande's face. 'That. That isn't anything so very great or wonderful, Mirrum. It's one of my own efforts – a battle, fought long ago. I can't do it justice but –'

'I'm sure you can, milady!' Mirrum spoke fervently, enthused by this talk of songs and poetry. 'It was like the _Chanson de Roland_ and _Yvain_ all rolled into one!' Mirrum's eye caught a stray word on the uppermost sheet of paper in the Little Dove's arms, and stopped, intrigued. 'Is it... Montgisard?'

'Mirrum!' A deep flush entered Audemande de Vinceaux's cheeks. 'How did you -?'

_Oh._ Too far. Too dangerous. Mirrum was a servant girl. Her literacy was a close-guarded secret to all but Sybilla and Tiberias.

_Think._

'My Lord Tripoli... he showed me the word once.' Mirrum said hastily. 'In a book of words. There was a letter like a Turkish bow...' Mirrum traced an M on the air with a finger, before wondering if she went too far even there. The Lady Audemande was intelligent, and from the look she cast at Mirrum, she had seen through the hurried pretence as though it were a wisp of gauze.

'Perhaps. That is my affair.' The cover of the manuscript fell back with a dull thud, sealing off the words from Mirrum. 'I should attend to whatever business you were about "for Lady Sybilla," Mirrum. It grows late, and I compose no more today.'

Mirrum was sorry for that. She had pried most abominably, in a way that would have been unforgivable for a courtier. She curtsied, grateful that the Lady Audemande had the grace to let the transgression pass.

'Hold a little, Mirrum!' Audemande called after her. 'There is something you _can_ do as a service to Sybilla.'

'My lady?'

'Rescue the prince from his tutors.' Audemande said, with a tight-lipped look that expressed hearty contempt for the 'tutors.' 'My lord Heraclius is already preparing the coronation, and they press him too hard in their haste. They seem to forget _he_ is a child...'

Poor Prince Perseus. Mirrum's face glowed with guilt. She had quite overlooked Baldwin over the past few days. 'Yes, my lady,' she said hastily. 'Thank you-'

She broke into an undignified run as soon as she thought the Little Dove was out of sight. Heraclius could barely muster respect for his King. How would he behave towards a child prince left without the protection of his mother?

* * *

'No! Ten steps, _ten! Exactly ten! _You must reach the top of the steps,_ here! _Asinine boy_!' _Heraclius smacked the place with his staff. 'No dawdling, no skip-skip-skipping... _and no yawning!'_

Baldwin hastily suppressed the yawn, eying the long stick with some wariness. Heraclius had already demonstrated a propensity to make his future king smart with the use of a stout birch rod should he forget the slightest detail of the ceremonies he would have to undergo. His head was already tired with the amount of things he had to remember. His head _ached _with all the things he had to remember. Why wasn't Maman here? He could have gone to sleep in the afternoon - instead of practicing walking through the stifling heat of the cathedral again and again, whilst the flies buzzed angrily against the windowpanes. It was _too _hot. Baldwin was tired and headachy and increasingly slow in walking through the direct path of sunlight.

'_Maman_ said _she_ would teach me.' he said plaintively, rubbing one grubby sweat-streaked palm fiercely into his eyes. 'Why can't we wait until then?'

_Smack. _Heraclius had struck the flagstones again. 'You good lady mother is not _here_, is she, boy? She is idling her time _elsewhere_, and with such little time left to us I have no time to waste on the Lady Sybilla's good graces. A _dribbling idiot_ could walk the length of this hall! And yet another lisping brat inherits the throne who can scarcely walk three steps together...'

Baldwin bristled at this, his small face knotted up in a scowl. 'I can walk!'

'Then do it, boy! From the beginning – again!'

Baldwin hopped nimbly to the back of the hall, for what must have been the ninth time that afternoon, and proceeded at a nodding, earnest stork-like gate from the doors, through the sunlight_, again..._It was _too hot..._

The headache throbbed louder than ever, an insistent knot of pain inside a very small boy's head. Whether it was that, or the tedium and the heat and the fact that he could do nothing right for the Patriarch of Jerusalem, no one would ever know. But just as Baldwin gained the steps that he had stumbled and tripped over and skipped up so many times, he sat down, hugging his spindly legs with his arms.

'I won't do it 'gain!' he said stoutly, raising a pair of mutinous eyes to the Bishop's face. 'I **won't.**'

'Your Majesty _will...'_

'No!' Baldwin was not Sybilla's son for nothing – he had a certain degree of childish guile. 'You _can't_ make me. Not 'f I don't want to.'

'And the – the _sin_ of violent insubordination towards your elders and betters...' Heraclius was spluttering, his face a mottled turkeycock red from the temperature – which was, in all fairness, more unkind to the Patriarch than to the little prince.

'But 'f I'm going to be _king_...' Baldwin said triumphantly. 'You have to do 's I _say_.'

And that would probably have been enough to win the ground. But little Prince Perseus was a child, and with a child's belief in the invincible, he tried to crush the impatient Bishop. And he added a fatal parting shot that lost all the respite he had gained.

'Like Thomas a Becket!'

'**What?**' The Patriarch turned a harsh shade of violet and strode forward, the birch rod swinging. 'Why, you insolent puppet –'

It was a little after this unfortunate moment that Mirrum appeared hurriedly in the doorway, only to find Prince Perseus screaming fit to crack the roof apart, and the Lord Bishop exercising a stern moral chastisement in the form of some sharp stinging strokes of the birch rod upon the the lord prince's legs.

Mirrum looked on aghast. 'Stop! Hold, my lord bishop!'

Heraclius did not even look up.

'_My Lady Sybilla has returned, my LORD!!!' _Mirrum screamed.

That caught his attention. He straightened up, hastily adjusting the swinging paternoster beads about his fat neck, wheezing fit to burst.

'Wha-'

'She wishes to see _her son_, your reverence,' Mirrum invented wildly, at breakneck speed, trying to mix a note of scandal in her voice. It wasn't hard. 'I am sure she would not wish to witness such...' Mirrum eyed the stinging pink weals on the chubby backs of Prince Perseus' legs and looked hard at the bishop, '...evident disobedience in the Prince.'

That worked. Heraclius' birch rod slowly descended. Without dignifying the servant (and probable illicit concubine) with a second glance, he puffed his way out of the room still snorting like an old warhorse.

But Prince Perseus still wailed and drummed his feet on the floor. Mirrum squatted beside him, wrapping her cotte about her feet, and waited.

Eventually the wails turned into plaintive sniffles, and Baldwin got miserably to his knees, eyes red-rimmed.

'He _birched_ me!' he said indignantly. 'He's _not_ allowed to do that! Only Maman does that, and she always says sorry afterwards!'

'He can do what he likes,' Mirrum said sharply. 'He's in power.'

'No he's not!' Prince Perseus scowled. 'I'm going to be king _and then...'_

'And then **nothing**.'

Baldwin stopped shocked in his tracks. Mirrum was never cross. But she had snarled at him...

'But I'm going to be-'

'If I had my way,' Mirrum said, rocking fiercely backwards and forwards on the bottom step, 'You wouldn't be _going to be_ king at all. Haven't you thought about what it will be _like? _You won't have any power! You'll be knocked about between one place and another like a ball in a prentice's game - until you'll either be knocked silly, or you'll be able to play the game better than anyone else. _You_ don't have a chance to grow into it.'

'But I _want_ to be king,' Prince Perseus said piteously. 'I want to...'

He cocked his head on one side. '_Maman _isn't back at all, is she?' he said accusingly. 'You _lied_.'

'That wasn't a _lie_, Prince. That was a sin of - of necessity. And didn't it save you a beating? The Patriarch has a stout arm.'

'It didn't _hurt_...' Baldwin speculatively eyed the stinging pink marks and gave them an exploratory poke, before grinning from ear to ear. 'I'm a man _now_,' he added grandly, brightly forgetting his scolding. 'I want some **food,** Mirrum. Can we eat now?'

Mirrum always cursed herself for taking Prince Perseus' bravado at its face value ...especially _afterwards_. But there. No one can know everything, and it would have been odd if Mirrum had felt a twinge of foreboding in that bright sunlight, whilst a little boy gambolled about her skirts like a playful puppy. Instead they walked away hand-in-hand to Sybilla's dusty apartments and dined on slightly stale bread and the baked meats of a palace shrouded in melancholy. Waiting is a lonely thing – even for a good thing.


	37. Chapter 37

When Sybilla at length returned to the stiff responsibilities of court, it was with a resolute face and a readiness that took everyone aback. The _new _stoical Sybilla who entered court was a sober creature with a ready eye and a brisk manner of approaching what needed to be done. For a time she was almost strait-_laced_. Prudish. Sombre. The flash of subtle mischief dampened and extinguished. As though Sybilla – fluttering, laughing butterfly Sybilla- had regressed into a hard carapace of ceremony and duty in order to do what must be done.

Sybilla had wrested with her demons during her silent sojourn in the Lord of Ibelin's house. The Sybilla-Wraith that whispered terror from her reflection had been fought in every pool of water, every idle wine-cup, and finally, amidst a taut atmosphere drawn tight as a wire, Sybilla had conquered - and moulded herself into an effigy of a queen-mother ; capable, jealously assertive of her son's rights, and of irreproachable virtue. What matter if she trampled on herself in the process? Sacrifice must be made. Sybilla could hardly deny, after all, that the burnt offering had not cost her dear.

In protecting her son, she had taken to the sacrificial altar her love for the Lord of Ibelin. The wreath of dreams was shrivelled to ash. The dizzy intoxication was a bitter wine. And in their last goodbye – one of muted tenderness, for they had both known it would be the last – there had been no reproach. He knew, and he accepted it. His understanding made Sybilla despise herself for the sacrifice politics demanded of her – but she did it, nonetheless. She had need of it.

So it was in this grey and clouded atmosphere that Sybilla rode to Court. And, after two weeks of serious schooling with her little son, announced plans for her entire household to swiftly decamp to the softer air and kindly winds of Galilee.

'Lord Tiberias will offer me the use of his estates,' she declared, almost as though daring anyone to dispute the matter. 'The air is healthier in Galilee. My son has need of a little peace while I school him in the great matters ahead. I will _not_ stay in Jerusalem.' Sybilla almost snapped the words out – although the clustered throng of silent servants had not breathed a word of dissent. 'I will _not_.'

* * *

'You will not.' Tiberias said flatly. 'You will not take one pace from the gates of Jerusalem while your brother lies thus, lady, and be you Queen regent or no in the future – yes, you may well look at me like that –' Sybilla's dark eyes snapped more than defiance. 'Any base-born woman would have the patience to _wait,_ lady. Out of compassion.'

'Many see my waiting as rank ambition.' Sybilla said tonelessly. 'As they all dance attendance like so many vultures? Guy, and Gerard de Richfort, and the rest of them? Picking the-the carcase...' Sybilla's voice snagged in her throat. 'I feel myself a vulture, Tiberias. The Court look at me and see a crown I do not wear. And all they do is wait... wait...' Sybilla bit her lip, hard, and then glanced sideways at the Lord Marshal, her gaze steady.

'I will not be a vulture. I will not array myself with my husband.'

Tiberias looked at her stilled fingers. 'Nor should you.' He said, more mildly. It was not often that he felt a twinge of respect for Lady Sybilla – she was still too rash, too prone to flee what troubled her to make a steadfast queen. But there were moments when her father's temerity looked out at him – and reminded him that Amalric's girl-child had kingly qualities nonetheless. It drew a note of honest deference from him that her coy fascinations never could.

'I would not for worlds see an avaricious queen 'picking the carcase', as you call it.' He said, quietly. 'But – neither would I see a frightened queen fleeing through mistaken fright from her brother's deathbed.'

Sybilla said nothing. She hugged herself within her mantle, rocking slightly to and fro – but she said nothing. Tiberias pressed on.

'Lady... come now, none of your caprices here,' he said gently. 'I have known you these many years – as well as any, better than most. And I say you would repent it at the end if you had no chance to say farewell. You would torment yourself with it as a goad to sting yourself. And you need no spurs, lady.' Tiberias shifted in his seat and bent his gaze casually towards the scattered scraps of parchment scattered across his scribe's table, already abruptly changing the topic. 'There, enough. On another matter, lady – your waiting-woman...'

'Mirrum?' Sybilla looked surprised – and perhaps not a little glad that the conversation was removed from herself. '**What** of Mirrum?'

'She is a good servant to you? You would agree on that?'

'She serves me well - and _well_ you know it, on many things,' Sybilla snapped. 'What worm stirs within your head, Tiberias? I do not see –'

'You would say, then, that she has shown her loyalty to the Royal House of Jerusalem surpassing the bounds of duty.' Tiberias spoke matter-of-factly. 'That is passing good. It will be a pleasing report...'

'What is this, Tiberias? What conspiracy...?' Sybilla's brow creased. 'You report of my serving maid to my brother? Why?'

It can hardly be said amongst the politicians of the world that a lie ever sat ill with their consciences – and Raymond of Tiberias had played his game in affairs of state with a sure hand for over twenty years. But he was a little dissatisfied that the lie he now told was such a -a _belittling _affair. It made Mirrum a pawn again; and Tiberias was not entirely at ease with her place as a playing piece. Perhaps he had learned his young liege lord's lesson a little too well; perhaps he recognised it as unworthy. But some vague indignation curdled in the back of his throat at what he was about to do. It was a sorry falsehood. But it was the best he could conjure.

'Faith, no reason,' he said dismissively, leaning back as though bored, one arm swinging idly over the carved back of his chair. 'Only your little northern waiting woman should deserve _some_ reward for the aha -_hazards_ of service to the Lady Sybilla. What other waiting woman would remain with her lady nigh on two years without even a sign of gratitude?'

Ah. That sparked a flare of irritation from the Lady. She half-rose to her feet, hands balled in her sleeves with outrage.

'She _does not_ go unrewarded!' Sybilla said indignantly. 'I _am_ no mean mistress. And she has served me well, and with discretion. Save for that ridiculous little clandestine affair with some mumbling prentice apothecary –'

Tiberias' lips thinned.

'Well! I mistook that,' Sybilla declared, tossing her head in uneasy fashion. She was not comfortable with the business – and there was a faint glare in Tiberias' eye that spoke volumes about "clandestine affairs." Hastily she sought to turn the subject in her favour, 'I shall make amends. I thought fair dower and an honest husband would be ample reward and recompense.'

'Mm. And you have _found_ these ample rewards for her?'

'I thought no need of it,' Sybilla said waspishly 'After all, I supposed her to have found a more _powerful_ protector...'

Tiberias' note of easy banter suddenly became a good deal frostier – as though a chill winter wind had blown away all pretence. Sybilla was still wallowing in self-contempt, and she struck thoughtlessly at another in her dissatisfaction.

Still, the blow had gone home.

'Whatever the maid earns is won on her own merit, not through any influence of mine,' he said slowly, pushing himself from his chair to outmatch Sybilla's height. 'And having served you well with Guy's affairs, she deserves somewhat more than _slights_. What dower did you have in mind?'

'Silver –'

'How _much_, lady?'

'Seventy-five silver _zecchins_.'

Raymond of Tripoli laughed sardonically – for reasons best known to himself. It was a generous sum for a waiting-woman, certainly over-generous for the landless. Perhaps it was merely another manifestation of the restless dissatisfaction he felt for the whole tawdry affair.

'And for husband?'

Sybilla looked more than faintly abashed. She clasped her hands convulsively in the lap of her gown, fingers twitching restlessly.

'She deserves a good man.' she said earnestly. 'An honest man to take to husband – and a kindly one. I have vowed to seek out such a one for her. A husband who has not too stout an arm, or too violent a temper. I thought perhaps an esquire – some young one serving amongst the knights. Or even a steward – if there be such a creature as an honest steward, which I doubt.' A thin flicker of humour passed over Sybilla's face. 'Finding even ten good men in Jerusalem is more difficult than I first thought, Tiberias.' She stared at him. 'Do not attempt to deceive me, my lord. You spoke of my brother...'

'Ay.' Tiberias stared sightlessly into the heat of the candle. 'I did, lady.' He paused. 'I have spoken with the King, lady, of this little matter, and of the many tokens of loyalty and affection your waiting woman shows you. That you have placed great trust in her regarding matters-'

'Tiberias!'

'- Of _state._' Tiberias finished, pointedly. 'The King has an interest in this matter, lady. It may surprise you to know of it, but she diverted him in some small instances on the road to Jerusalem. He is of my mind - that she deserves some recompense more than a handful of silver and a gawping groomsman.'

Tiberias spoke with more savagery than he had intended. Sybilla watched him, warily, and then shrugged her shoulders, rising with a (somewhat resentful) flick of her sleeve.

'I do not pretend to understand your intentions in this.' She said over her shoulder, as a parting shot. 'Where does this lead, my lord?'

* * *

'I have news.'

Sybilla had arranged matters in her chambers so that Mirrum stood in sunlight, her face glaringly exposed to her mistress' scrutiny. Sybilla, watching from a corner of her silvered glass, had thought it an excellent plan for divining any subtlety behind the business. It disconcerted her to be proved wrong. She might as well have sought uncertainty in the carved face of Saint Cecilia the martyr than seek it in Mirrum. The girl stood quiet, one foot turned slightly inwards to trace the pattern of light and shadow on the stone tiles. Her face was utterly blank.

Sybilla deftly applied rose and sandalwood cream to her face, examining Mirrum's reddened fingertips.

'My Lord Tiberias thinks it fitting,' she said tautly, 'that you needs must have an audience with my brother. I do not pretend to understand it, but then again–'

Mirrum's fingers gently closed in on themselves.

'...Tiberias has always been a mystery to me.' Sybilla finished coldly – and then suddenly turned in her chair, curiosity overcoming her fit of caprice. 'Mirrum, _why_? I don't understand it.' There was a note of perplexed pleading entwined in her voice. You leave me giddy with your humours. First you both make a very pretty pretence of blushing innocence – and as soon as I believe it truth that you are no more than you say, Tiberias jostles you towards my brother as though you were a profligate baron's whore...'

A painful flush entered Mirrum's cheek. But that was far less painful than Sybilla's gaze. Sybilla was agitated – and, in her own way, concerned.

'I _know _you have no hand in schemes of furtherance, Mirrum. But ambition is a dangerous game for any noble to play – let alone...' Sybilla's voice trailed away._ Let alone a little gosling dizzily following her elders and betters' folly._

Mirrum saw the words as though they had been scribed upon Sybilla's doubtful forehead.

'Tiberias fought for you against me, know you that.' Sybilla said at last, looking away. 'He said you had caught my brother's interest as a creature of discretion. Is that _true_?'

'It is, my lady.'

'On your oath as you hope to be saved?'

'_Yes, _my lady.' Mirrum said in a small voice. 'It is. My lady, you wrong the Lord Marshal.'

'Do I?'

'Indeed you do.' Mirrum said firmly – and somewhat hotly. 'Lord Tiberias is _not_ a man for mistresses.'

'You are _very_ certain.' Sybilla eyed her, dubiously. 'How so?'

'He _told_ me so, lady!' Mirrum looked back through her memory, casting her mind out like the thin thread of a fisherman's line. Finally, it snagged. 'He said - he has no patience for harems of squabbling chickens who drink gold like rainwater.'

Sybilla's eyes smiled, if her stoic expression of disapproval did not change. '**That** has a true ring of my lord Tiberias. But interest...' Sybilla looked at her half-pityingly. 'What interest could my poor brother have in _you_?'

'I... I was... I –' Mirrum's voice had shrunk again, small as the sigh of a mouse. 'I had some little speech with the King, my lady. I gave him tidings of you.'

'And that is _all_?' Sybilla seemed relieved – to her credit, more for her brother's sake than her own. She had not wanted to believe that Tiberias could, in his own way, play the part of a carrion crow. 'Then all is well.' She glanced over her shoulder at Mirrum. 'You are a kind child. I don't believe you would do any harm, even if you were...' She examined her face broodingly in the mirror. 'But I do wish that-'

'My lady?'

'That it had never begun. Any of it. All of it. I wish you and I and Ammet –' Sybilla's lips tightened momentarily at the thought of her errant woman-in-waiting. 'I wish we were all as we used to be.'

'But...I do have your leave to have audience with the King, lady?' Mirrum said tentatively. Her pale half-moon face briefly showed the strain of the cross-examination – she looked exhausted, hollow-cheeked and red-eyed. Waiting for her mistress seemed to have told upon her constitution.

'You don't need my leave, Mirrum.' Sybilla examined her face in the silvered glass of the mirror. 'I am pleased ...' She turned slightly. 'Tell him _soon_. Tell him Sybilla will see him soon.'

* * *

The meeting came sooner than Mirrum supposed.

It came after the courtiers had supped. It had been a dismal affair of cold fowl and wine that reeked of funeral meats and suppressed uncertainty. The Court of Jerusalem had never been able to match the extravagant pageantry of the courts of France and Burgundy, but what little gaiety it had kept was now entirely stripped away. Courtiers were waiting for the turn. It was a shuffling of the gaming board.

Mirrum hated it. And, at a guess, so did Sybilla. It forced her to make a show of alliance with Guy at table. Guy was boastful, louder in his cups than used to be his wont, and apt to oafishly try to take Sybilla's hand in a flagrantly farcical show of nuptial harmony. Sybilla was as stiff as a wooden doll beneath her silks. Mirrum was a practised hand at the old demure custom of service now, and she stood composed enough – until the end, when a sudden twitch of her cotte drew her aside from her usual place and into the seclusion of a passageway.

It was one of the household; one of many blue-clad squires who flitted mysteriously throughout the palace. Mirrum dimly recognised his face.

'My Lord Tiberias bids me bring you to the King, madam.' He said quietly.

Mirrum flicked a small, startled glance back at table. Tiberias was still seated, examining the dregs of his wine cup with gloomy abstraction. But he caught her eye as she turned towards him. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

_Yes. Go._

Mirrum found her feet falling unconsciously into a lolloping half-skip after her guide – hurried, quick, but occasionally trailing. A strange sort of rhythm.

Pit-pat, pit-pat.... pit. Pit-pat, pit-pat...pit.

How did the old song go, Mirrum wondered absently, her mind idly wandering into the paths of nostalgia._ Lulli lullay, lulli lullay, the falcon has carried my mate away..._

It was an old French rhyme, dimly linked to old tales from the _chanteurs_ and closely intermingled with the aching melodies of the Breton balladeers_._ Mirrum had heard snatches of it sung by a street singer at a Lammas-tide fair once, and the rise and fall of the song almost matched the fall of her tread...

_In that orchard there was a bed, hung with gold shining red..._

There had been something about an orchard brown before that, but Mirrum's memory eluded her there. What she remembered clearly was what followed...

_And in that bed there lies a knight, his wounds bleeding day and night. Beside that bed..._

'Madam?' The squire had stopped so smartly in his tracks Mirrum almost walked into his back. 'We are here. If you will wait but a while...' The squire drew a breath and folded his hands behind his back. 'The Kings holds audience.'

'Yes.'

Mirrum stood shifting from foot to foot before the uncomfortable silence began to suffocate her.

'I feel at a disadvantage, sir squire,' she said awkwardly, 'in that I do not know who I should offer thanks –'

'Guimar de Bois-Gilbert,' the squire said abruptly. 'Think nothing of it, madam.'

'But-' Mirrum suddenly recognised the rather sullen jut of the chin. It was the arrogant squire. The officious, unpleasant squire who had chided her for sullying the palace with her awe that day she arrived. He was all deference now, but then –

Nothing could have made Mirrum's anxieties worse, but the presence of the wretched Guimar de Bois-Gilbert completely extinguished her feeble attempt at courtesy. She looked down at her feet, examining the pitted stone pavement beneath her feet.

Footsteps. The audience, whatever it was, was over.

And to Mirrum's great surprise, it was the Little Dove who emerged. Her eyelids were puffy and swollen, as though from weeping. But apart from that glaze, her carriage was as erect as ever.

'My lady Audemande...'

The Dove turned her head, but Mirrum's presence and hasty obeisance hardly seemed to register. She seemed almost - _shocked_.

'He pronouced me Court _trobairitz.'_ She said tonelessly. 'To the Princess Sybilla. Or – the queen regent, as she will be.'

The Lady Audemande could not seem to bring herself to speak of the future, yet. Not whilst the past still drew breath. Mirrum felt a surge of affection for the bereft Dove, even whilst she marvelled at it.

A _trobairitz_ was markedly different from a _chanteuse_, a mere singer of songs. To be _trobairitz_ was a name of renown – it proclaimed Audemande a gifted composer as well as a singer; a poet of singular talents, to be treated with reverence. By declaring her a lady _trobairitz _to Sybilla as queen, it gave her protection -freed her, from the unpleasant position of being Court Poet to Guy de Lusignan. No one offered insult to such a superior singer of songs as a _trobairitz_.

It warmed Mirrum to the Physician's kindness as well as his sense of duty. But there was something numb in the Little Dove frozen shell of grief that made Mirrum stop short in congratulations. She didn't want it. Not at the cost of a new king. Her dragging footsteps as she walked away betrayed as much.

So there are two of us, at least, Mirrum thought. Not one, like in the rhyme.

_...Beside that bed a maiden stays, _

_And she sobs by night and day._


	38. Chapter 38

The first thing Mirrum noticed, as Bois-Gilbert officiously bowed her in, was that every care had been taken to assure that the King appeared strong. It was an illusion of power – perhaps designed to hold off Heraclius and the other snarling nobles with the doubt, however fleeting, that the fever might not have a stronghold. That its grip might slacken, slowly, and die away with a little weakness, nothing more. That the King might yet recover.

Mirrum suspected Tiberias as the hand behind this last mummery – a kindly backdrop for his liege lord to slip away from with dignity and decorum. And it had to be said, the backdrop was artfully arranged. The air was still thick with the cloying scents from the braziers, but there was a richer, more openly luxurious aroma than Mirrum dimly recognised as frankincense – a costly gift, and an instant reminder of the power he still held between his two hands. The bed had been concealed from sight by a soft blue veil stretched across the apartment. It dimly fluttered in the slight evening breeze.

And the King? What of him?

He was no longer supported by a bulwark of pillows and bolsters upon the bed like a frail old man. That, Mirrum was relieved to see. He was instead seated in a large carven chair placed near the light. He looked upright, firm – and not a little intimidating. Perhaps it was the success of his illusion. The cobweb-fine white linen Mirrum had seen him wear last had been replaced with broidered, sombre silks of a subtle blue black weave. They seemed to tether him to the earth; make him appear sterner, graver. Coupled with the calm, emotionless splendour of the mask, it made an imposing, albeit carefully composed picture.

It very nearly persuaded Mirrum that he was a different man altogether. It was almost alarming... But... then, nothing at Court was what it seemed. When she looked again, with a surer eye, she could dimly discern the cracks in the Physician's last illusion. It was a lie. The King – her King, she might have dared to add, had she not felt so ill at ease – was not so much seated as wearily propped in his chair, his movements slow and deliberate with the caution of a man in obvious pain. The dark silks, although they dispelled the shroud-like air of his white garb with kingly magnificence – they revealed the true state of affairs all too clearly. They hung slack and heavy on his wasted frame.

Mirrum's appalled eye saw all in an instant. But even while she inwardly quivered with grief and pity for the poor Physician – another part of her soul marvelled at the wondrous skill with which the illusion of health had been created for the King's endless audiences with lords and barons and officials. This was a studied image for the world, and the world alone. And, in a sense, Mirrum felt a twinge of strange pity for the world that didn't know false from true.

He was examining some papers as they entered. Mirrum wondered at that, as he slowly put them aside. Had they been hastily snatched up for Bois-Gilbert's benefit, or for hers? The constraints of such a meeting as this made her ill at ease as it was. But with Bois-Gilbert present....

Well. At least she remembered her schooling in the address of monarchs from Sybilla, though it cost her no little pain. She sank to one knee, legs trembling with the sustained effort. Just when she wanted it most, her curtsey was perhaps the saddest ruin of a thing ever to confront a King. It was almost a relief to hide her expression by bowing her head

'Your Majesty,' she murmured. Waiting. This was a formal audience; Bois-Gilbert's presence made that quite clear. It would be the blackest discourtesy for Mirrum to speak her name whilst there was a squire present to announce her.

'The lady Miriam of Malmesbury, my lord – woman-in-waiting to the Princess Sybilla.' Guimar de Bois-Gilbert pronounced it with a ponderous relish clearly copied from some booming steward-of-the-lists, one leg thrust forward for his obeisance - the very model of a dutiful squire.

Mirrum briefly considered hating him for it – especially for Miriam of _Malmesbury_. Malmesbury was one of Dame Juliana's fiefs. Declaring her _Malmesbury_ was as good as denying that she was anything but a serf. Where had he _learnt_ that? Even Lord Tiberias would have had trouble remembering that she was ever Miriam of _Malmesbury_.

The King did not, not even by the quiver of an eyelid, reveal any surprise at the name.

'Your name is known to us,' he said calmly. 'You have powerful friends; ones who sing your praises, child. We have heard good report of your service to the Lady Sybilla.'

Mirrum ducked her head, still bent achingly in her obeisance. She couldn't think of any adequate response that wasn't either servile and cringing or stingingly awkward. Mercifully, no reply seemed to be required of her. He moved deftly on through the formalities with a sure hand.

'Our noble cousin the Lord Marshal speaks highly of your person,' he continued. 'Highly enough to recommend that you cease to be cease to be a landless of _Malmesbury_ and instead be instated as a proper subject of Jerusalem –'

Mirrum was mazed. A disconnected part of her mind watched in detached idleness as the words of the King bound her like threads of scarlet wool; full of the formal speeches of court and politics. And so very, very far from the ease with which Mirrum had talked with the Physician in the garden. The impassive silvered face of Apollo gave no measure of how he felt, but surely, Mirrum thought, watching his eyes, watching the way the clumsily swaddled fingers drooped exhaustedly over the arm of the carved chair – surely this tires him? Bores him? It means nothing. It might be in a painted history and have more meaning to me. But not whilst it happens. Not _now_.

'-You shall cease to be landless, assume a place as gentlewoman and subject to the County of Tripoli, and therefore bear name of _Montferrand_, rather than that of said _Malmesbury_.'

Mirrum's shoulders jolted; much as though one of the elusive Jerusalem angels had taken a heavenly spear and driven it sharply through her shoulder blades. Pinioning her into eternal surprise. The face she turned towards the motionless King was almost horrified.

'No!' she blurted out. 'Your majesty must pardon me, my lord, but I do not – I did not come for _lands_...'

There was a slight note of amusement in the King's voice that was only thinly disguised under his level tones. 'Do they displease you?'

'No, my lord – I-' _Yes,_ thought Mirrum desperately. _Yes, they do. I do not want them_. _I will not have them._

'It is a great gift, and – and a great honour, my lord, but I cannot in truth – I –' Mirrum floundered miserably, lost in her own aghast babbling. 'And besides - I cannot possibly take land from the Lord of Tripoli -'

'He is exceedingly eager to be robbed, then,' The King remarked drily, 'since it was he who suggested I gift a portion of Montferrand to you. It is no rich province; the lands to the east of Tripoli are hostile, and the soil poor. But the rents are yours, henceforth –'

His voice trailed away as he caught sight of Mirrum's thin shoulders ducking into another courtesy. It was true, she held them tautly in check, with the tight control of one who knows that weakness will show there most.

Mirrum lifted her eyes from the floor to find that the eyes behind the mask had darted a blunt, pointed stare at Bois-Gilbert – who shuffled from foot to foot. He was a young squire, Mirrum thought contemptuously. _Very_ young, not to understand the signals. He only left the apartment when the King finally lost patience and spoke the command, 'Leave us.'

'Jesu!' He said wearily, 'It is a hard pretence, Dane-Lady. He has gone.' He added, 'I am sure of it. An older squire would have the sly wit to eavesdrop. You will not wonder at your poor Physician now, Dane-Lady?'

'It seems a hard thing, an audience with a King,' Mirrum said, infinitely relieved. 'I like the Physician much better.'

'I rather think _I_ like the Physician much better, Dane Lady. He sees you clear. And **I **see that the thought of ending your service to Sybilla as mistress of Montferrand seems to distress you beyond measure.'

'Because I have not earned it!' Mirrum said quickly. 'There are knights twice worthy –'

'I _say_ there are not. Come, would it be so hard to be a gentlewoman? The rents will make you a woman of means. Mistress of your own destiny, Mirrum.' His voice was gentle. 'Is that truly so hard? What made you nearly weep just now?'

'It will -will justify everything Sybilla believed of me.' Mirrum said in a quiet voice. 'She half-thought Tiberias thrust me at you in order to profit – to coax you into giving away property to me-'

'She believes that of you?'

'She does not know what to think, sir. And I do not wish to lose her good opinion. She has been very kind to me.'

'And you are content with my sister's plans for you? Seventy-five zecchins and a husband you will not love?'

Mirrum had no answer to that.

'So. Not Montferrand, then. There are other estates outside Montferrand – greater. I can give them to you without suspicion...'

Mirrum could brook this no longer. 'I do not want any estate, my lord,' she said deliberately. 'And even if I could take the lands you give me without a murmur from Sybilla-'

'You will **not** take it?' He sounded plaintive, a note of frustration - anger, perhaps – running through the low notes of his voice. 'But I _wish _you to have it.'

Mirrum shook her head. 'No.'

'You cannot refuse!' The eyes behind the mask looked bewildered. 'I could _make _you take it...'

'You won't,' Mirrum said, suddenly on stronger ground. 'You won't. Because you would throw off the Physician then. And I would give in before I saw you do that – though it would make me unhappy to take Montferrand or any other place from you. You are not well, Physician, and it does you little good to sit and argue the case out for it.'

He subsided at that – falling back in his chair as though letting it slip through his fingers. 'I had another care when I thought of Montferrand,' he said quietly, the words a faint whisper through the smile of the Greek God mask. 'Montferrand makes you mistress of your own destiny and allows you choice, Dane Lady. You could choose your suitors-'

'I shall have no suitors.' Mirrum said swiftly.

'You will have suitors, Dane Lady, decide what you will.' There was a faint half-smile to his words. 'But you may have one not to your liking if you trust to Sybilla. Do you trust her so much?' A sigh broke through the silence. 'Sybilla is sadly haunted by her own marriage. I fear she would give you a husband you could not respect, much less love...'

'She said once she would give the Physician to me.' Mirrum said sadly, after a long, regretful silence. 'At Ibelin. She was happy then.'

'At Ibelin,' the King repeated. 'Yes. She was happy then, with Balian of Ibelin for company. I do not wonder at it. The man is steady – and kindly. And he has compassion as well as duty...' He sounded pensive, perhaps a little regretful. 'I am weary, Dane-lady.'

'You are, Physician?'

'Yes. And I am a little heartsick with too many audiences today.'

'I can call the squire...'

'What? No, don't call him. Why call him? You can aid me just as well as he – and I can bear it better to be helped by my Dane-Lady than by an officious squire.' He gestured tiredly towards the light blue curtain. 'I think the play is played out, Mirrum. The Fisher King may break his staff and abjure his crown, and slip away into the twilight...'

'I do not hurt you, Physician?' Mirrum asked anxiously, as he rose swayingly to his feet. The weight that hit her shoulder as she supported him was heavy, almost inert, and for a moment Mirrum feared that perhaps he had overtaxed his reserves of strength. But after a few moments of confused disorder amongst the draperies Mirrum had helped him struggle over to the bed, and between them both managed it well –an easing into the cushions, and then Mirrum, coaxing the rumples from the dividing veil with careful fingers. He watched her as she did it.

'I think Sybilla would readily have given your Physician to you, Mirrum.'

The remark was so utterly out of place that Mirrum's countenance drew into an anxious pucker, lest he should be wandering in a sad delirium. But the gaze from the eyes of the mask seemed as collected as ever, and strangely earnest.

'You think so, Physician?' Mirrum looked away. 'I think otherwise.'

'Not in this world, perhaps...' The gaze changed to become extraordinarily wistful; there was a light note of plaintive curiosity in it that reminded her very much of the younger Baldwin, still happily engrossed in mock battles with wooden soldiers. 'But... what if I had been the king with the honeysuckle beard?'

'You wouldn't have been the Physician then.' Mirrum said promptly.

'No? How would I have been different?' He sounded amused. 'How would your king behave? I have half a notion now, Mirrum, that Baldwin the Fourth was quite a different person to me. I may like your Baldwin better.'

'But if you _were_ him, you would be a tyrant!' Mirrum burst out, half-indignant at the idea of a different king – even the initial garish creature of her own invention.

'A tyrant?'

'Oh, not a tyrant as such...' Mirrum bit her lip and ventured a half-smile. 'I only knew of Kings from the scandalous _Histories –_ monks enjoyed lascivious monarchs then. I supposed them all alike. Even the noble ones. I –' she hesitated.

'Tell me.' The King said, the amusement still rippling through his speech. 'You hesitate because you still think of _me_ as Baldwin the Fourth. I rather feel as though he – if he lived – was a dim phantom from the painted histories. It is quite separate from me.' He spoke calmly. 'I am the Physician from here until eternity, Dane-lady. Tell your stories without fear. What did this noble flaxen-bearded monarch do?'

'I am quite sure he lived heartily in all things, until dying at a good age – past fifty.' Mirrum began, hurriedly. 'And he –'

'-hunted!' The Physician said triumphantly, almost starting from his pillows. 'You said that the first time I met you. The goodly king hunts with hawk and hound, and a party of courtiers-'

'Who are always dressed in their best!' Mirrum said quickly, caught up in the enthusiasm of the make-believe. It was a pretty pretend, after all. 'No matter the fact that courtiers do not hunt in that fashion– the monks and their coloured inks have you believe kings hunt in cloth of gold and coronation robes –'

'I suppose the fair-haired one does so,' the Physician said sleepily. 'Does he aught else, Mirrum?'

'Oh, he wins battles, gloriously.' Mirrum said, her fingers twitching agitatedly on the counterpane. 'Dressed in a silver mailcoat, he dealt death and dispensed mercy, this other king of yours. He was known for his generosity towards his allies, but he gave no quarter to those bitterly set against him. He probably had a loud laugh and enjoyed good wassail at Christmas and Lammas tide. There would be pageants and masques, and the ladies of the court would dress as Penthesilea and her Amazons –'

'Like Eleanor of Aquitaine? I heard that tale too – when she came to the Holy Land with King Louis of France.' He smiled, behind the mask. Mirrum could feel it. 'Sybilla would like that. She has always loved France...'

_I imagined Sybilla differently too ._Mirrum thought. _I had in my head a simpering golden doll of a creature in blue velvet – and a king to match. Neat as dolls on a shelf. Exactly alike and with little to tell between._

'There were great quests and adventures, and – and...' Mirrum stopped, at a loss for words. Her invention had been stopped dead by the cold facts before her idle suppositions about the King of Jerusalem could come to fruition. She _had_ no more.

'And the king encouraged them,' The Physician continued – as though it were a tale he knew by heart, this tale of the King who never was. 'But he never took a quest on himself. He was honourable, and a keen warrior with a hearty appetite for deeds of renown – but by some strange chance the quest destined for him never rose on the horizon. He was left to governance. Until one day, riding alone, he chanced to find a circle of emerald-green flame burning in the desert, and within it a tower of pale stone. The flames burnt fierce, and the tower struck a note of uncertainty into the king – for such a thing was clearly not of this world. But he reasoned that if this were a quest he was bound to fulfil, the flames would ebb, and as he urged his destrier over the emerald green flames, the flames flickered out as though they had been extinguished, and suffered him to pass on. And at the very top of the tower, he found a maid asleep.'

'Asleep?'

'Ay, asleep. On a great pile of furs so high they nearly reached the roof. And no ordinary maiden either. This hearty, flaxen-bearded king had seen many wise, fair, noble ladies within his own realm, but he had never seen a maiden'- he shifted slightly, as though pained.

'A maiden who was -'

'Puny and foolish.' Mirrum said bitterly, thinking of her faults. She could never whole-heartedly indulge in make-believe where it concerned herself.

'No.' he said gently. 'Not puny. And not foolish either. Very pale, like a wax effigy with starlight trapped in her hair. A little lost, a little uncertain. But very beautiful. And clearly of noble blood, and well deserved to be a gentlewoman...' The King's voice was growing drowsy, now – a little fretful, as though he found it hard to cling to the passing of the present. 'Mirrum, you are sure you will not take Montferrand?'

'No, no, and a thousand times _no_.'

'Tiberias will offer it again after I am gone. Sybilla can scarce say it was coaxed out of me then...Will you take it then?'

'No.'

'Tiberias is a hard man to refuse, Dane-lady...Speaking of which, the sleeping maiden was a great barbarian queen from the ice-bound North, and she was ensorcelled by a marsh-witch...I...think... was it a marsh-witch? Or perhaps an afreet... I do not remember what I would have said...'

'I should leave you soon, Physician,' Mirrum said with difficulty, swallowing a burning sob like a hot coal. His wandering disordered her sadly. 'You must keep your strength a little while longer – Sybilla gave me a message for you.' It was a desperate sally – but it seemed to snag on a trailing strand of consciousness for a moment. 'Sybilla?'

'Ay, my lord King. Sybilla. She gave me solemn promise she would visit you and speak with you. So you must keep it a little while longer – a little while, my Physician...'

'Sybilla could not object if I did not _give_ you land – if I gave you something else, instead-'

For an instant Mirrum thought his delirium still harped fretfully on the theme of Montferrand, and opened her mouth, ready to refuse it.

Until she caught the expression in his eyes, and stopped, abashed. The blue eyes looking back at her were quite calm and collected.

'There is an open coffer by my chair,' he said, after a painful silence. 'Go to it. I gave the Lady Audemande many of my histories and tales.' The King continued. 'I reasoned as Sybilla's court _trobairitz,_ she would need them for her lay-making. But I left one gift for you that I knew you would not refuse.'

'Physician-'

'In the chest there is a book. Beneath the papers.'

Mirrum found it. It was a small quarto volume bound in faded brown leather. The spine was cracked – unless carefully oiled, books in the Holy Land had a brief lifespan. But the book had clearly been much loved and well-thumbed. Mirrum picked it up with reverent fingers.

'Is it -'

'The _Meditations_. I said I would give them to you. Even if I cannot give you Montferrand...'

'Physician-'

'I don't reproach you.' The King said , drowsily. 'I think I am... glad you didn't. Not because I... grudged it...But if it would make you... unhappy...'

'I am very happy... my lord...'

'Happy...' The eyelids fluttered shallowly beneath the eyeholes of the mask.

Mirrum silently slipped from the bed, aware their time was done.

'Sybilla gave solemn promise she would visit and speak with her brother on the morrow.' She said, squeezing her grief like a scorpion into her palm. It stung her viciously, but it was just possible to clasp it tighter and imprison it with calm. 'Remember that, my Physician? A-and...' she swallowed. 'Thank you. For allowing me to know you.'

Sybilla brought the news, and a grieving softness that was new to her, back to her apartments on the evening of the morrow. After a humid, achingly hot day of waiting, all was over. It was finished. The Temple wasn't rent from top to bottom at his passing. No churches toppled, spilling their domes like cracked eggs. The Physician, and that shadow-self King Baldwin IV, left as quietly and peaceably as he had come.

**Author's Note:**

**Apologies for the long wait for an update; I'm hoping this will serve as an apology. I really had to screw my courage to the sticking place with this chapter – it's probably the reason **_**Tu Salus Fidelium**_** has been drawn out so long. More updates soon, and many many thanks to my faithful and interested readers.**


	39. Chapter 39

"_Shāh Māta! Shāh Māta!" _

It was a cry running through Jerusalem like a call to arms. It created knots of bewildered, pensive people crowded together in the streets – occasionally a quick-limbed street urchin would scamper from one group to another, eyes and ears quivering with eager curiosity. Torches bobbed through the air, letting the words spit and crackle amidst the orange flames.

_Shāh Māta. Shāh Māta. _

It was not yet dawn, on the day that extinguished the King of Jerusalem. And the news had already streaked across the city like wildfire, devouring the minds of the people as though they were dried twigs...

There would be a vigil of three days decent mourning. He had been a King who kept the peace, and in these uncertain days of warning skirmishes and high temper,, that should be honoured – if only for a brief space. In some, the words "_shāh māta" _conjured up the cold baked meats and honey cakes that accustomed the death of kings – the odd tang of a celebration, yet coldly laced with the faint grave-mould smell of mortality. An uneasy time of brief feasting. The priests, it was certain, would be shuffling and reshuffling their stock of sermons and holy words like a pack of cards, contesting for the most fitting eulogy. There would be saying of Masses for the King's soul by the hundred. Flocks of newly-devout folk would scurry to their holy places and plead for the present against the looming blank of the future, under this new king, his regents, Saladin, the unscrupulous southern barons, bad harvests...

Times of change frighten people. Especially when no-one knows what to expect, or how the future may topple everything like a castle built of palm leaves.

Some others in Jerusalem were oddly relieved at the end of this King's reign. It had been hard to pray for him, after all. God willing, the new king would be healthy as well as capable – a battle-worthy king, in time. _Shāh Māta _released them from the constraint of having a King it was hard to take pride in.

But, in the end, whether sorry or half-heartedly glad, nearly everyone is swept up in the fervour of the vigils and fastings that thread the streets of Jerusalem with an intricate cobweb of dancing votive candles in the growing dusk. _Shāh Māta _allows them all to give vent to their emotions in a brief, public display of grief before picking up their lives again.

All except three people in the city of Jerusalem, who do not join in the general clamour, courtly or otherwise, of _Shāh Māta. The King is dead._

The Princess Sybilla of Jerusalem, soon-to-be Queen Regent to the most illustrious lord king Baldwin V, does not feel the relief she thought would come at her brother's death. Instead she feels an emptiness gnawing at her breast – a tugging absence of something that was lost. She looks at her son's soft mop of downy childish curls and thinks of hair the colour of dark gold, a thin, clever face at the cusp of adolescence that promised beauty, health, life... And the ache chills her. Inside her painted apartments, Sybilla weeps.

The second person is a man who sits half-dressed, blank-eyed and drear of face, and looks below at his stables. They are well-filled, and stocked with more intelligent company than the whole benighted court of Jerusalem, but that is not what makes him sigh. What makes him start, however, is a well-cloaked figure leading one of the lay servant's mules from the courtyard in the early morning light. There is no business at this hour. And he knows the height and gait of the figure all too well.

Wordlessly, Raymond of Tiberias snatches the nearest things to hand and leaves his rooms, biting his lips so hard that a few spots of blood fleck the corners of his mouth.

And the third, and last, of the few who mourn?

A servant girl, tall and gangling, tugs a recalcitrant beast through the winding streets and abandoned alleys of Jerusalem. The mule is all she dares takes from the stables without comment or pursuit. All she owns she stands up in – or is laid carefully swaddled in rags and sacking across the mule's back. Even in her numb desolation she is careful not to take the main streets through Jerusalem, or the crowded market-places. The extravagance of emotion that surrounds _Shāh Māta _makes her feel slightly sick, the tight, empty place that knots her stomach already cringing at the distant roar from the crowds.

Thinking herself alone and unmarked, Mirrum breaks into a run.

_Shāh Māta. The King is dead._ It was such a simple thing to say, and yet the ripples had already spread from the palace, widening in ever ostentatious circles. The easy fasting and extreme brevity of Bishop Heraclius' eulogy (who, notwithstanding his distaste for Sybilla's brat of a princeling, nonetheless praised the illustrious future Baldwin V up to the skies) became the mass hysteria of the crowds outside the palace walls. The whole kingdom was in mourning – and yet only three, from the entirety of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, would truly _miss_ him.

And one of them was running away.

* * *

Mirrum had had no fixed idea of leaving the Palace until she watched the slow mechanics of the court slowly turn; the public grief that would almost instantly become public rejoicing for the new king, and then everyone would _forget_. Sybilla, as Queen Regent, would settle briskly into the role. Tiberias would become advisor to yet another young King; offer counsel, sign papers, and dismiss all that had gone before from his mind. Forgotten. (It must be said that Mirrum's grief was a selfish one, and therefore easily, in her present mood, consigned the sorrow of a sister and the friendship of a trusted advisor to a lesser footing than her own)

Mirrum wanted to escape. She wanted to run until her breath choked her and her heart beat so fast it dizzied her. She wanted freezing mud and the sting of salt on her lips and a bitter cold day that stung with ice. She keenly felt that she was 'chilled', as Tiberias had called it the eve Kerak was won. The trouble was that she could not see a way to a thaw within herself. Dame Juliana and the bleak ploughed fields of an English winter suddenly seemed desperately welcoming – fitting companions for the grey blankness of her mind. Dame Juliana could hold no reminders of things... lost.

Mirrum was not entirely mad in her schemes of flight. She had thirty-five _zecchins_ of her own – gifted, in intermittent periods of wild generosity, by Sybilla. It was a fortune in English silver, and it would –just - take her to Messina, although much less allow her to take ship home from Venice. And that was without allowing for footpads and the perils of shipwreck and villain on the way home. Mirrum had thought coldly of it all, examining what she knew of the road. There were bands of pilgrims who travelled together. Perhaps she could find safety with them? They would travel from hostelry to hostelry, taking refuge in the monasteries where they could find them. Misadventure was less likely in large numbers.

But...Mirrum already, in her heart of hearts, knew it was an act of utter folly. A lie to herself, offensive to her soul and the Physician's memory. And it made her sick to her stomach to hear the crowds. To stamp the dust of the Holy Land from her feet, she would have to travel through the wailing mourners tearing their hair and clothes at the David Gate. She stopped, reins in hand, and stared at the crowds milling like an upturned ant's nest below the incline that led to the guerdoned city walls and the David Gate. They were all so _wild_... So uncontrollable...

They frightened her. But she envied them all their noisy display of grief. Mirrum would have felt much better if she had been able to cry and stamp her feet and tear her clothes. She stared at them for a long while, motionless on the road through the city.

Before she sighed, and took the mule a different way. Even lost in quiet despair, Mirrum had enough sense to see that she could not leave Jerusalem. Even if she had wanted to. There was too much she cared for still.

Ah well, she thought wearily to herself. Nothing is lost. Sybilla will not even notice I have been gone. It will all slip back into the old way...

Just like the road. Familiar, the old dust of Jerusalem kicked up in faint puffs beneath the unwilling trot of the mule. Mirrum followed its meanderings mechanically, barely noticing the windings she took. But after a little while she raised her head – and found herself in a part of the city that was utterly unfamiliar. The buildings were of a different stone, their very appearance crowded and hostile. The sky seemed almost blotted out by their defensive huddle. And of the hills of Jerusalem – the familiar spires of mosque and sepulchre – there was _nothing_ to be seen. Not even the swarms of wailing pilgrims mounting in vigil towards Calvary.

Worse yet, there was no-one in sight. Mirrum gazed about the narrow street in mounting panic. It was growing late to return to the Palace unseen. The Sun was already crawling inexorably upwards. Sybilla would find a second lady-in-waiting absent from her, and she would not forgive her inexcusable absence. It would be _infinitely_ worse than the business of Ammet at Ibelin .

Perhaps not a flaying. A casting out. Made all the worse by the fact Mirrum's folly and her irresolution had led to this predicament.

Ah! There. The sight of a Franciscan robe darting out from an unobserved side-street. Mirrum's stomach unclenched in relief. There might _just_ be hope...

'Brother! Forgive me brother, but a word? Please?'

The robe turned, revealing a slightly jowled, irritated face within the cowl. 'It ill becomes women to thus speak to a man of the cloth –'

'I am lost, Brother.' Mirrum said frantically, stopping dead in her frantic scurrying towards the brother. 'This part of the city is strange to me... I do not know –'

'Christ will provide,' the monk said complacently, raising his fingers in a leisurely benediction. '_Deus volte_, my daughter.' And he hurried away without another word, darting a glance of expressive dislike over his shoulder like a stray arrow.

Mirrum stood crestfallen in the street, too dispirited to even attempt turning back. She had been too bold in her panic. Had she been a more humble supplicant, she might have had a more favourable answer.

She could retrace her steps, at least. Perhaps she could find her way back without detection? Mirrum tugged at her mule's bridle almost savagely in her haste. There had been some narrow steps, almost carved into the side of the hill. A dirt track, leading downwards towards the road...

Urged on by false confidence, Mirrum broke into a jogging trot. Yes, surely a little further...Only a little further...

Oh Physician,' she thought despairingly. Forgive me my betrayal to Sybilla. I never meant it – and God forgive me, I may pay a steep price for my folly...

But nothing went right with Mirrum. The steps led down, sure enough – but Mirrum could not remember the turn she had taken, and instead followed them helplessly ever downwards, far past the road she should have taken, and ever closer to the roar of the crowd. Surely she had not come this far? Perhaps they were not the right stairs at all...

"_Shāh Māta! Shāh Māta!" _

A crowd of jostling pilgrim folk had lurched from an adjoining alley, clamouring like a crowd of noisy starlings. There were so many of them, and they came upon her so suddenly, that Mirrum was helplessly swept up in their wake, buffeted to and fro from one side of the crowd to the other. _Here_ two noisy Genoans, cracking nuts and telling coarse jokes to each other, there a fat peasant woman locked in some strange religious ecstasy, telling her beads and murmuring the words of the _De Profundis_ over and over again to herself.

'And then Hob said –'

'I pray you, let me pass!'

'T'is a shame – and there I was, ready with my psalter, and the priest never even looked at me! Heathen folk, let me tell you...'

'Please – good madam? Sir?'

'Don't _push_ so! The beldam, pushing honest pilgrims about –'

'In the Holy City! For shame!

''Ware cutpurses, good dames. Heathens, all of them...'

'Walking about as though it was theirs – say, what's the crowd for?'

'Vigils at the David Gate market – honouring the King just died, so they say...'

'Please –p-please – let me pass!' Mirrum was weeping with frustration. 'Please let me go, _please_...'

No one heard her. The troop of pilgrims had dragged her along with the current of the crowd towards the market at the David Gate, the crush now so tight that Mirrum was hemmed in at all sides by the crowd. Worse yet, someone at the back of the crowd began to push, impatient of the delay, and the pilgrims surged forward...

'No!' Mirrum's hand was dragged from the rope of her mule by the sheer motion of the crowd. She caught desperately at empty air, looking back in frantic alarm. All her worldly possessions were loaded into the flat sackcloth saddlebags. Two gowns, a downtrodden psalter, a pitiful handful of English coin that could not be used here...

And the _Carmine_. The scroll the King had given her that had caused so much grief. At the thought of Catullus being lost to her - _stolen_, perhaps - Mirrum almost leapt back through the crowd. Fright made her cruel; in her blindness she used her elbows and feet, thrusting the full weight of her body almost into a startled pilgrim Frenchwoman's face as she looked in vain for it. Surely...

The mule was gone. She had not even been determinedly fighting her way towards it; as Mirrum gained the safety of a doorway, she could see it being headed off, at the far side of the crowd, chased by two small grinning boys with blackthorn sticks.

Mirrum span, blindly out of the doorway, letting herself be carried along by the crush of the crowd until she could slowly push her way into the dusty quiet of a side-street – anywhere, it no longer mattered. It was too late to return, even if she could find her way back – and lost, alone, dishevelled, and with no possessions?

Mirrum had paid a steep price for wanting to run away. Hiccuping, with her face swollen from weeping so much in the crowd, she sank down into the dirt of Jerusalem and stared sightlessly at the opposing wall.

There was nothing to say anymore.

She did not notice the grey destrier trotting through the David Gate crowd. Or its rider.

* * *

At first glance, it would have taken a keen eye to identify him as the all-powerful Prince of Galilee. He had been somewhat remiss in his dress that morning, and the ill-shaven fellow in the leathern doublet and hose kicking his mount into a canter through the milling of the crowd looked more like a sullen man-at-arms than a Lord of Tripoli. He kept turning uneasily in the saddle -as though searching for something. Occasionally he would mutter something savagely under his breath to his horse that certainly was not any demonstration of piety.

Tiberias had ridden through the David Gate crowd twice that day. He had travelled a little way along the Stephen Gate road from Jerusalem, and from there back into the city – where he had made a hasty search of the Sepulchre, Solomon's Temple, Calvary, and any holy place that crossed his agitated mind. He had followed the road Mirrum had taken diligently for a little while, and several times had almost crossed paths with her – but her meanderings in the by-ways of Jerusalem had entirely thrown him awry. He had lost his temper with two perfectly innocent groups of pilgrims, a seller of spices, and one of his own horrified squires. He was certainly on the edge of weary defeat.

Until he saw a glimmer of pale disordered hair across the crowd. There are few fair-haired maids in Jerusalem; even in a city where the four corners of the world clamour in worship. Tiberias urged his weary mount forward.

Mirrum did not see him at first. She was still staring blindly at the dust-daubed wall in front of her, her mind wiped of all coherent thought. She did not look up when the shadow of the horse fell across the street.

'Christ _Jesu._..' Tiberias' voice was icy cold. Mirrum flinched, visibly, like a rabbit caught between the jaws of a hound. She had not thought anything could make her more unhappy today. She cast one dismayed glance upwards, and then buried her head in her arms.

'Forgive me...' she said, in a cracked voice. 'I – I am wretched for it. I can slip away and not trouble Sybilla or –'

'Slip away!' Tiberias, if anything, looked more angered than ever, his lean face dark with displeasure. 'Were you _mad _when you conjured this plan, girl? Has your brain turned soft in Jerusalem's heat? Faith, I think you were rather mad than think you meant it in your senses! Or did you drink too deeply of the stewards wines? Jesu, I have a mind to...'

He looked at the slight, crumpled figure curled in the dust and his expression changed. 'You had no care for yourself, child.' He remarked tightly, dismounting with a wince to adjust the bridle. 'Not in this feast of fools. What did you hope to _gain_ by it?'

Mirrum shook her head, looking up drearily. 'I knew it was...it was _foolish_ before I even left J-Jerusalem. I wanted to g-go home...' Here Mirrum gave way, in between hiccupping strands of explanation . 'B-but I don't want the D-Dame ...Juliana...Oh, I wanted –wanted England! Because I felt s-so cold...But I –I knew I didn't really w-want it... because I c-couldn't leave Jerusalem... everything I love is here! B- but...I got lost, and I couldn't find m-my way back... and it grew too late... and S-Sybilla... she w-will cast me out... And I repented of it the minute I did it! B-but there was no chance to make amends and now I shall have to beg and the mule was stolen in the crowd and I lost e-everythiiiing....'

She wept bitterly.

Lord Tiberias looked first bemused, and then oddly moved by Mirrum's loss of control. She had always been such a quiet, restrained little creature that her grief now was a little like the high-pitched scream of a hare –it awakened the softer emotion of pity.

'And so,' Tiberias remarked, his face still averted as he fidgeted (somewhat fruitlessly) with the bridle, 'You feel yourself deserted by your friends, patrons, and doubtless the Lord God himself, thrown out of a second Eden?' He turned and stooped, raising Mirrum's chin with one finger towards his own. Mirrum stared up at him, bewildered by the searching expression she saw in his face.

'Enough.' Tiberias said at last, moving abruptly away. 'I have spent a day tracing the footsteps of your folly, child. I will waste no more time.' He slapped his horse's neck briskly, before swinging himself wincingly into the saddle. 'I return to the Palace now.'

'Sybilla will hate me,' Mirrum said dolefully. 'I kn-know. But w-will you tell her I am sorry? My lord?'

A spasm of irritation crossed Raymond of Tripoli's face. 'Get up, you little fool,' he said curtly. '_Now_.'

Mirrum was so shocked her legs obeyed almost before her mind had digested his command – and was promptly, if unceremoniously, pulled into the saddle before him.

'Sybilla,' Tiberias spoke grimly into her ear, 'Shall _never_ learn of this. Do you understand? This day _never_ happened.' He twitched the reins impatiently before shifting his grip, looping one arm about Mirrum's waist. 'These things are easily concealed. You bewail your fate too soon.' There was a faint note of amusement in his growl – clearly the hideous comedy of the situation had tickled the Lord Marshal's sense of humour.

Mirrum was almost too exhausted by her fit of crying to comprehend it all. 'Y-you are not angry with me?'

'Angry?' retorted Tiberias tartly. 'I was ready to flay you at first - for being such an empty-headed little goose.' He sighed. 'No. I am not angry with you, child. Although perhaps you sorely need a whipping from Sybilla. I am not accustomed to troublesome maids. Stripling squires are much easier to manage.' He tilted his head, looking at Mirrum's face.

Unlike the heroines of a jongleur's _romaunt_, Mirrum did not look radiant in sorrow. Her face was swollen from her protracted fits of crying, her eyelids puffy, and her nose was scarlet from too much sun.

'God's blood, pale girl, the day has not been kind to you...' Tiberias gently - but firmly – tightened his grip, so Mirrum fell back into the crook of his shoulder. 'Rest, if you like. We have a half-hour ride before we gain the palace. Your wanderings have taken you far...'

Mirrum closed her eyes, obedient as a little child. She was exhausted, and the heat of the day made her eyes throb...

'Oh!' Mirrum started upright, hands clasped over her mouth, which had begun to tremble. 'Wait... I cannot go back!'

'What foolery is this _now_?'

'I lost a mule! From the Palace stable... at least, I think I lost -There were boys... they stole it away in the crowd...'

'Forget the mule.' Tiberias said abruptly. 'It matters not.'

'It belonged to the Palace...' Mirrum said sheepishly, twisting her hands over and over.

'I can buy five times three mules for the damned Palace, if that will content you...' Tiberias paused as Mirrum slumped back against his shoulder. 'What else did you lose, child?'

'A psalter. Two gowns. A thimbleful of English coin,' Mirrum said, impatient of these trifling losses. 'But... I lost the – the _Carmine._' A hot tear squeezed itself from beneath her eyelid. 'Catullus, remember? M- my poetry...from -'

'_Ahh_,' Tiberias breathed. 'I am sorry...'

'It – it is not...too great a loss...' Mirrum said, trying to be stoical. She shyly twitched her cloak, displaying a small square weight sewn into the lining. 'It is not all I had from him. I still have the _Meditations._ It is just the - the roll was too great to be hidden like that...'

Raymond of Tripoli fell into a silence, broken only by the ringing of the horse's hooves on the stones of the street. Mirrum leant back again, her scanty stock of words run dry. It was an inexpressible relief to be able to close her eyes and not think any more, but just to _stop_, if only for a little while. All she could feel was the quick motion of Tiberias' breathing...

'I can recover all but the poetry for you.' The lord Marshal said hastily, after an interminable pause. He spoke rapidly, almost as though he wished it spoken before he could think better of it. 'It is a small matter, after all. And if I could get your Latin back for you, poor gosling, I would. But I fear that cannot be replaced.'

'You are too generous, my lord,' Mirrum said timidly, a little aghast at this unexpected turn. 'I can easily find them myself –'

'That you shall not do.' Tiberias said severely, and then paused. 'I think you have had punishment enough today, after all. Though I hide your folly for the last time, mind. And upon _one_ condition.'

They had gained the Palace enclave. Mirrum sat upright, her shoulders tense. 'And that is what, my lord?'

'Today,' Tiberias said calmly, 'You did _not _spend wandering the streets of Jerusalem like a lost lamb, because you were otherwise engaged with your overlord, as subject to the County of Tripoli – and you return late and covered with dirt because you rode out to survey your lands of _Montferrand_.'

Mirrum bit her lip. What could she say?

Tiberias, as he gently let her down from the saddle, wore an expression of barely disguised triumph. 'My reluctant gentlewoman looks downcast,' he remarked. 'But _that_ is my price. No more martyred denials, my lady. That is the tale I shall tell Sybilla – and I _defy_ you to tell her otherwise.' He added, a faint smiling creasing his severe features.

Mirrum looked up at him, utterly bewildered.

'I don't understand, my lord. _Why_? Why would you bestow so much...?' She shook her head, the pale cloud of hair floating about her.

'_Why?_' Tiberias' face changed rapidly into a grave look. 'Little maid...look at me.' Mirrum raised her eyes. He had reached down, lightly laying the back of one gloved hand against her flushed cheek. 'I do it because you have suffered, and that is partly through me. And because we both loved the King - in our different fashions, you and I. That makes me your friend through good or ill. And because...little maid...' He checked himself, a strained expression suddenly entering his eyes. 'I...'He swiftly leant from his horse, mounted as he still was, and softly kissed Mirrum's forehead. It was so quickly done Mirrum had scarce time to register it, and by the time she realised what it signified the Lord Marshal had kicked his horse into a near-gallop towards the stables, one hand raised in a gesture of abrupt farewell.


	40. Chapter 40

That day did much. It did much that was good, true, for Mirrum mended her manners. The hanging tattered rags of her conscience were darned and patched into better repair with bewildered gratitude and stunned obedience – as well as a certain wonder that troubled Mirrum from time to time, in the form of fitful dreams. The dreams were often alarming – the kind of hopeless dream where Mirrum wandered, lost, in a great pine forest that had no end and no beginning; a forest from the darkness of England and the troubles of the mind. Mirrum flitted like a pale shift hung to dry in the depths of her dream-forest. She was continuously oppressed by the trees– it was too close, and too dark, this labyrinthine maze of wood.

Sometimes something followed her trail.

Mirrum was never very certain on what manner of beast it was that hunted her. Perhaps it was the Questing Beast – who knew? Sometimes it took on the lean shape of wolf, sometimes the gaunt spectre of a bear, but always, at the close of the dream as the creature snarled in front of her, it had dark, haunted eyes that suddenly appeared very like-

Mirrum, in consequence, was often dull of eye and wan of appearance from little sleep. She did not like to be hunted by the dark eyes, even if at the moment of dissolution they softened their expression, so the creature rather seemed to be pleading with her than devouring her.

Alas, if only dreams were all her concern.

Sybilla had taken the news that her humble waiting –woman was to flutter to the echelons of modest nobility with a reluctance, at first. Miriam of Montferrand. How strange it sounded. And as it was within Tiberias' own provinces, Sybilla made no remark upon it. She had long since thrown her hands up in despair at ever learning - for _certain_- whether her maid and the Lord Marshal were lovers. She had settled rather neatly on the idea that they were a pair of perplexing madmen, or fools, and left it at that.

But...

'You will find it very _different_, being a woman of property.'

Sybilla was telling her beads abstractedly over her _prie-dieu_. Sybilla's Book of Hours lay open; a golden haired angel holding out a lily to the Holy Virgin in a perfect golden-blue painting of the Annunciation. The ivory Paternoster beads were a gift from the Patriarch Heraclius. Perhaps that is why Sybilla clicks them so irritably, Mirrum thought idly. Every bead– Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious alike – rattled through her hands like the sharp snap of a crossbow bolt.

It was not a good time for news of this kind to reach Sybilla. Her exterior presented a calm front, but the shadows under her eyes told a different story. The strain of her new role told a little on her. Mirrum kept her eyes fixed on the ground, face resolutely turned downwards in a state of humble submission.

'It is _very_ different. Different to what you have been brought up to –' Sybilla pressed her lips together, before flicking a wide-eyed glance at Mirrum over her shoulder. 'You must not cringe. Or seem to be discomfited at the change. The court will devour you –' Sybilla clicked a bead pointedly. '_Snap._ Just like that, if it sees any sign of weakness. I have seen it happen. And there is not only that...' Sybilla rose stiffly from her knees, flicking out her skirts into more severe regularity. 'Have you considered all that it means, _ma petite revenante_?' Her tone was kindly.

'I-'

'You must have rooms of your own. Not a mattress on a stone floor; a _true_ room. One waiting woman at least; possibly a serving man, groomsman – and then there is the matter of your rents and monies, settlements, judgements -'

Mirrum's expression must have betrayed her fright. Sybilla laughed.

'Yes – no easy matter is it, to fly so high? It is a sorry life you shall lead as a woman with lands,' she said - and she was only half-joking. 'It does make the matter of your marriage easier; you are a goodly prospect now. Lands make young handsome hopefuls easier to attract.'

Mirrum's stomach curled in upon itself like a jellied eel – cold, clammy, and more than a little sickening.

'I have given some thought to this,' Sybilla said, her voice ringing distantly in Mirrum's ears, and I believe I have found a suitable match...'

'Y-you have?' Mirrum's voice rose a cracked octave higher. 'I... what is- my lady, I-'

'Oh tush! I know you, Mirrum. You will have some little choice – that which it is in my slight power to render you. And those I have chosen have noble quality. Although I regret, petite revenante, that you are not sufficiently noble to carry my train at the coronation. I will offend the ladies of the Court as a whole if I allow you a privilege such as that.' Sybilla sighed, impatiently. 'Odd, isn't it? As my waiting-woman, no-one would have batted an eyelid. You would have been invisible to their eyes. But a few acres of dust to your name and everyone falls to snarling...'

Sybilla turned away from her prie-dieu. 'I think the mulberry, for today.' For a moment, Sybilla looked sad. 'None of my ladies stay with me long, do they? First Ammet run off with a lover, and now you are made a gentlewoman...'

Gentlewoman, thought Mirrum, gloomily. A gentlewoman. Mirrum of Malmesbury is now mistress of her own destiny – and already has less freedom than she ever had as a maid. Sybilla, in a wild gesture of hasty generosity, had bestowed a dark-haired girl attendant on her as a gift at parting – but from the supercilious glance her 'maid' darted over her drab dress and plainly dressed hair, it was plain she was found wanting already. She would make a far better lady than I, Mirrum thought, as her attendant strode briskly ahead. Perhaps I should dress her up like a child's rag doll; give her my clothes, send her out to play the part of Lady Miriam of Malmesbury.

'Your rooms are very fine, my lady,' the girl remarked, throwing a careless glance over her shoulder. 'Though they will need airing. They are old, and disused.'

'Oh?' Mirrum said politely. She could hardly have cared less about the rooms.

'They are large, though. I _suppose_. Though I would have thought they would have given you _better_. You have the favour of my lady Sybilla, after all.'

Mirrum rallied her spirits, at that. She would _never_ have talked to Sybilla in this way – and that scornful glance had _smarted_.

She stopped dead in the corridor. 'If you _dislike_ my service, I can return you to my lady Sybilla,' she said sharply. 'I am sure she will be very gratified to hear her gift was so... **courteous**.'

One small part of Mirrum was horrified to hear the cold note in her own voice was a watery reflection of my lord Tiberias at his most acid. But it certainly worked. Mirrum was gratified to see the look of bored truculence had been completely wiped from the girl's face, to be replaced by horrified penitence.

'My lady, I-'

'Well?'

'Nothing, my lady. I can only offer my most humble –'

'N-never mind that!' Mirrum snapped. Beneath her gown, one leg was trembling with nerves at her own daring. But she was riding a wave of steady confidence now. 'What's your _name_?'

'Alix, my lady-' The girl looked frightened.

'I don't _wish_ to be here.' Mirrum said flatly. 'I would rather be where I was. And I didn't want Montferrand, either, so make of that what you like.'

Alix cocked her head on one side, looking for all the world like a pert robin. 'You didn't?' she asked, shaking her head as though not knowing what to make of her. 'You aren't what I expected...'

'What _did_ you expect?'

Alix tilted her head to another angle, as though still searching for some elusive element in Mirrum's slight frame. Whatever it was, she didn't find it.

'You are plainly dressed,' she said bluntly. 'And you look _honest_...' To Mirrum's great surprise, Alix grinned widely at her, as though they were good friends. 'My last mistress before lady Sybilla was Pasque de _Rivera_. I was a peace offering to Lady Sybilla before I was gifted to you. I might as well be rolled across a merchant's packhorse.'

'Pasque de Rivera?'

'You don't _know_?!'Alix giggled. 'The lady _Patriarchess_, is what she's better known as to most. Nothing but a draper's wife – but she feathers her nest nicely, let me tell you – walks around draped in more jewels than the statue of the Virgin. She would have kept me-'Alix added, tossing her head, 'I can keep my mouth closed when I choose. Only my lord Heraclius urged her to give me to Lady Sybilla. He wanted her favour, since she will be regent, and they have not been on good terms. Only Lady Sybilla did not care to keep me – and here I am with _you_.'

'And you thought me –'

'_Someone's_ mistress.' Alix peered at her, head cocked on one side, and then gave another wide grin. 'But you aren't. I can _tell_. I never had aught to do with honest women before. I like you better than the _Patriarchess_.'

Mirrum found herself wondering if the girl were more than a little simple – and then decided in favour of silly, instead.

'Where are the rooms?' she said abruptly, ending all further discussion on the subject of Jerusalem scandal.

The rooms were close to the enclosed courtyard where feasting was held in fine weather, and, as Alix had said, they were indeed old. There was a fine bed, which must once have graced the chamber of a noble far more distinguished than Mirrum. But that the hangings were musty and smelt faintly of mildew, and that two of the legs were scored and marked with cracks where the scented cedarwood had split, it would doubtless be there still. There was also a pearwood chest carved with Old Testament scenes; _here_ a stiff wooden King Solomon gave judgment, _there_ the walls of Jericho tumbled down as an angular Joshua blew his horn – and crowning all on the lid of the chest was a great Tree of Knowledge, its branches curving intricately in loops and curls of leaf-laden forbidden fruit. And the room...

The room had a chimney piece nearly as large as Mirrum's old sleeping quarters – and that too was marked by a peeling frieze of gaily painted figures – lords and ladies skipping hand in hand in some tableau of imagined revelry. It was so different from what Mirrum had envisaged that she stopped dead on the threshold as though accused of trespass.

'Hmm...it is _fair_,' Alix said critically, surveying it with a practised eye. Clearly Pasque de Rivera lived well. 'Fairer than I thought. But the hangings will need airing at once – do they expect you to live in a pigsty? And there's linen to be fetched and the floor to be swept, and –'

'Can that be done later?' Mirrum burst out, dismayed at the thought of so much industry. 'I would like to rest first. It has been a strange day –'

Alix gave her a strange look. 'Rest? Why? There are clothes to be made up for your station now, my lady – you cannot go out dressed in Palace servant's livery. And there is the coronation to be thought of – in so soon a space, too! Two days!'

'So much?' Mirrum was appalled. 'But I thought...'

'I have instructed Sybilla's tiring woman to wait on you,' Alix said firmly. 'She will take your measurements, find you what is fitting – as well as fashion you something for the ceremony. And after that -'Alix cocked her head on one side, amused. 'My lady, my previous mistress was a common shopkeeper's wife, and stout and coarse at that. I have seen how hard it can be, changing your degree. But you must accustom yourself to it. This will _not_ be easy.' She pulled the rich coverlet from the bed, coughing at the cloud of dust it raised. 'But... if you really wish to rest... I can _dawdle_ on the way back from the laundry.'

Mirrum barely waited until the door was closed behind her. She flopped listlessly on to the bed as though she were an empty set of clothes, collapsing in a crumple of blue linen.

And _wished_.

It was a strange thing. When the King had been alive, it had been so _hard_ to construct the Physician's answers – to imagine what he _might_ say. Talking to him in the privacy of her own head had been too difficult; she couldn't even conjure him in face or figure. Now it came so easily she was almost surprised at the capacity of her own mind – that she had absorbed what she had known of her friend the Physician so completely, and refashioned him so well.

When the Physician came _now_; as he often did, whenever Mirrum felt lonely, or frightened, or missed him most – he no longer came with that perfect symmetrical mask, lonely as a splintered carving of a forgotten god.

He came with his own.

Mirrum was never _quite _sure whether it was her own fancy that made him as he was. For a start, he was not the Fisher King. Nor was he the king of the honeysuckle beard; Mirrum felt quite sure she would have no scrap of sympathy for such a gaudy creature had he flapped into existence.

He had the same eyes. The same grey-blue eyes – a shade deeper than Sybilla's, and the gaze still snagged you like a fish on a line, but now they looked at you from a thin face, angular and amused – young and not-_quite_ -handsome, but fair enough to make you look twice, and smile at what you saw. And his hair was not quite the garish flaxen blonde fair that chroniclers would have you believe. It was only a shade or two lighter than Sybilla's own dark locks, and but for a sudden sly glint of gold when the sunlight caught it, you would have been hard pressed to call it fair. Mirrum was pleased that she could imagine him so well. She could not think it fair to him to imagine him ailing in the next world. That would be too cruel.

'_I did tell you,'_ the Physician remarked, smiling at Mirrum from his grey-blue eyes. '_I told you Tiberias was a hard man to refuse, Dane-Lady.'_

Mirrum groaned and threw a hand over her face. 'I detest it already! Why is it so hard, Physician? It seems so _much._..'

'_Being Mirrum of Montferrand is hard?'_ The Physician lightly sat down next to her, invisibly shaking his head. _'Yes. Yes, it is hard. But then again...would it have happened if you were still serving your old mistress?'_

'What,Sybilla?'

'_The old_ _Saxon.' _

'Oh...' Mirrum pulled herself up on one elbow, to look at him better. 'No. No, it would not. I suppose...'

'_You would be equal – if not of better rank – than she.' _The Physician pointed out, gently_. 'The world turns strangely, does it not? One moment you are a maid, and the next a gentlewoman– and all on a chance spin of Lady Fortune's wheel.'_

'Tiberias made me a gentlewoman,' Mirrum said, glancing at him. 'What does _that_ mean, Physician?'

'_You ask me a question you have already asked once. In the garden.'_

'And you were sharp-tongued,' retorted Mirrum. 'And impatient with the question.' The invisible Physician ducked his head, plucked abstractedly at a loose thread in the crumple of cold damp linen lying crumpled across the bed.

'_Was I?'_

'You were.' Mirrum said.

'_Well then – I owe you an honest answer. In exchange for one in return.'_ And if anything, the Physician's voice was quite as sharp as it had been before. Mirrum found herself avoiding his gaze. _'What are __**you**__ asking __**me**__, Dane-Lady?'_

'I-'

'_Come, you are not a fool. Nor am I.'_ The Physician said firmly._ 'You ask me of the Lord Tiberias.'_

'I- I do...'

'_You also ask a question that you alone, Dane Lady, know the answer for_.'

Mirrum let the question well alone, for now. She asked another, one that had faintly troubled her.

'Physician...am I-' she paused. 'Am I wrong to – to wish you into existence again?' Mirrum lowered her eyes to stare at the loose thread. 'I know you aren't real...'

'_Am I not?'_ The Physician said tartly._ 'As you please.'_

' Don't – don't be offended!' Mirrum said hastily. 'I only meant that wishing the dead back is sin enough without _imagining_...'

'_Is that all?'_ The grey-blue eyes snapped with an almost childish disregard for Mirrum's ghostly concern. '_I don't languish in Purgatory, Dane Lady! Neither do you.'_ The Physician broke off, thoughtfully. _'Then again... if I am a pretence of yours, Dane Lady... it is a good pretence if it helps...'_

'Yes – oh yes!'

'_Then you need not worry.'_ The Physician said firmly, reaching out as though to grasp Mirrum's hand. Mirrum closed her eyes, quickly, in case he merely drifted through as though – as though he _were_ a ghost. If she closed her eyes, it might feel as though he really were there...

'Milady? Have you a headache?'

Alix had returned, already – and looked a little askance at her mistress sitting bolt upright upon the bed, eyes closed as though in pain.

'What? Oh! No,' Mirrum rose, embarrassed, curling her outstretched hand tightly in on itself. 'No, I was just thinking.'

'Oh...' Alix looked at her curiously. 'Thinking.' She gestured towards the door. 'Sybilla's tiring woman is here. She has some things for you.'

'What, already?'

'Oh, I don't think she is that nimble a needlewoman,' Alix brushed disgustedly at the grey fluff covering the front of her gown. 'But she has two cedarwood chests with her... Bah, this dust!' She retreated to the door. 'With respect, lady, I shall go and beat your coverlet. Sarai will hardly need my presence...'

Mirrum had to admire Alix's sense of timing. As she opened the door, the maid gave a stiffly correct obeisance, announced 'My lady Miriam of Montferrand, a person is here for you' – and then gently sidled away down the passage. She was much smoother than Mirrum had ever been. It might almost have provoked envy, had Mirrum still been a serving-maid.

As it was, Mirrum drew in a breath to give herself a little courage, and smiled.

Mirrum had had some few dealings with Sarai in her time serving Sybilla. She was a diminutive Italian built like a child's doll, bowed with age and wrinkled all over - like a prune. She rarely ever smiled, and Mirrum sometimes thought that she had long since stitched all her merriment into her mistress' bright clothes, leaving none to spare for herself. But her eyes were sharp, and they missed nothing.

Mirrum wasn't sure that she wasn't still a _little_ afraid of Sarai.

Sarai herself, however, entered with a brisk step and a business-like expression, eyes already flickering thoughtfully over Mirrum's person as though taking her measurement.

'Milady.' She said, briefly. Sarai was not one for conversation. She turned abruptly, releasing a flood of Genovese insults at the serving maids who staggered behind her, each clutching a large chest. Mirrum watched them in mild bemusement, until Sarai briskly gave a chivvying push at her maids towards the door – and Mirrum was left quite alone with the Queen Regent's tiring woman.

It was with difficulty that Mirrum attempted to summon the gentle impersonal smile Sybilla adopted – gracious, with a gentle inflection of authority. Surely, Mirrum thought despairingly, it would be utterly false to pretend I was gently-born? But I must not 'cringe'...

Mirrum attempted the smile. It brought a tortured rictus to her face.

'Madam Sarai...'

Sarai inclined her head. 'Signorina.' Smiling, she gestured towards the two chests, and then pointed to Mirrum.

'For me?' Mirrum stared, not understanding, flushing a little with embarrassment. She had no money as yet. Alix had muttered something about the steward holding the purse-strings. Of course, it was Mirrum's to command – But was that in theory? Mirrum wondered. Was it a sign of nobility having no money at all? Just pretending to pay for things?

She flushed to the roots of her pale hair Mirrum's father had waxed very strong on the shame of debt . 'I-am-truly-very-sorry, Sarai-but- I-have-no-money-yet-and-I...'

Sarai stared at Mirrum for a minute too long, and then shook her head, throwing back the lid of a chest. 'No _ducats_.' She said briefly. 'Gift.'

At first, it looked like a shroud. The box was so thickly packed with protective layers of coarse linen Mirrum half wondered if it was an ill omen. It was only when Sarai began to gently unravel the moth-eaten linen to the thing it protected beneath that Mirrum's pebble-coloured eyes began to widen.

The shifts emerged first. They were made of cobweb-thin linen spun so fine you could see the sun shine through it when Sarai held it up to the light. They seemed almost gowns in their own right to Mirrum...

But no, wait, more! Examination done, Sarai briskly, almost carelessly threw the shifts aside, and then burrowed down into the wrappings until she unearthed something that threw a watery sheen onto the plaster of the wall...

'Oh!' At that, Mirrum did gasp.

Sarai held up a dark gown, smiling broadly at Mirrum. It was of a changeable blue-green silk that swelled and ebbed like the sea itself, the material so lovely it felt as though something hurt when she looked at it. It was something a lovely dark-haired baron's daughter would wear in a Breton tale. The colour of a beetle's iridescent wing.

It fit well, when Mirrum tried it on – although Sarai made 'Tsk!' noises at the way the neckline sagged on Mirrum's thin shoulders, and let out a string of musical Genovese amusement at the knotted sleeves – an old fashion not practiced by ladies for many years now. Mirrum could vaguely remember them, a little. It had been the fashion of ladies in her early years in England, no doubt copied from Burgundy and France.

Whose gown had this been? Mirrum wondered. It showed a few signs of wear – and it had the peculiar musty smell of clothes put away and forgotten. Beautiful though it was, was the lady dead whose maids had laced her into this, dressed her for banquets and masques long turned to ash? Were the fingers who had wrought it turned to bones? Mirrum traced the silk idly with one hand as Sarai fussed about the skirt, teasing the folds into practiced perfection – and then shivered as her hand brushed the raised pattern of _embroidery_ across her left breast.

Time had faded the colour of the thread into a drabness that hardly showed against the dark colours of the gown. But as Mirrum examined it, she managed to trace the clumsily stitched outline: three towers on a castle keep, within a shield. A heraldic device.

Sarai dug a fingernail into the faded thread when she saw Mirrum stare, and pulled loose the thread with a faint air of distaste at such poor stitching.

'Can be removed, _si_?'

Sarai made as though to pull yet more wrappings from the box – but hesitated at the sight of the violet shadows smudging Mirrum's eyes, and laid the linen wrappings down.

'I come back tomorrow, _Signorina_._' _She said gently, closing the door behind her.

Mirrum struggled out of the brocade gown like a gosling struggling from a wave, almost tearing it off in her haste to look at the badge more clearly. Yes, she hadn't been mistaken. Three towers on a castle keep...

Not just that, but the three towers did not just appear on the gown. On the shifts too, in flaxen thread that was nearly invisible to the naked eye, the three towers were stitched again – and over the left side, too, as though to lie directly over a beating heart.

She was proud, the lady who had once worn these, Mirrum reflected, sinking back on the bed in exhaustion. She was proud of her lineage. It could perhaps be a husband's device – some bold knight as glittering as a summer mayfly, perhaps. Only somehow Mirrum doubted it. She doubted it because - because of the clumsy stitches. The gowns and shifts were those of a slender young girl, and the materials were lovely – but not chosen by _her_, somehow. They were of a mother's choice...which explained the badges. The strange unknown girl had broidered them herself to bring a part of herself into them.

Mirrum packed the clothes away almost mechanically, rebelliously ignoring the fact that she should wait for Alix. Who would probably scold her. But her mind was racing. Her fingers needed an occupation.

But the badges seemed _sad_. The dead lady's stitching was clumsy; halting, as though whoever had sewn it had been ailing – and ailing sadly at that. Had done it fitfully. But why the shield? Why that constant repetition of the three towers, the castle keep?

Mirrum paused as she closed the lid of the chest, looking at the few sad threads that still clung to the breast of the blue brocade gown. An ailing lady – an ailing young maiden, perhaps, who dressed in the fashion of twenty years gone. Who –

_Who was thought base-born, perhaps?_

Sybilla's voice came back to Mirrum's mind as though at a great distance. It was one of the first things Sybilla had told her, back in the early days of the garden and the gaming board.

"**He started a vicious campaign of vengeance for a slight to his sister's birth when he was younger..."**

Younger would be twenty years ago. Tiberias near forty now; he would have been in his early twenties then. Mirrum struggled to imagine that. The grimness; that world-weary intelligence of his seemed to _make_ the Lord of Tripoli. Imagining him young and hot-blooded made Mirrum breathless – as though something gripped her vitals too closely.

But the _sister_...

Mirrum opened the chest again, tears pricking her eyes from the dust. The sister had been slender, and sickly, and she had sat fiercely embroidering the badge of Tripoli onto every item of clothing she owned to prove her birth – to prove her own idea of worth in the only way she knew how – with a needle, rather than a sword. Poor sister! Mirrum thought. What a sad reminder of mortality it was...

Before the rather more fluttering, sobering thought that followed it. Sybilla did not give these to her. Sybilla couldn't give them, because they weren't hers to give. The Lord of Tripoli had sent the raiment of his own sister by blood to her.

It made Mirrum giddy, looking over the edge of that precipice. That was not the gift of a liege lord to a ward. It could not even be a gift between friends. The clothes had been saved - as though keeping the memory safe between the linen wrappings. And now they were given to _her_...

Mirrum shivered slightly, closing her eyes as she pulled her own gown over her head. He had always shown her regard – perhaps unusually _high_ regard, now she looked at it. But it was so hard to tell with Tiberias! He was always so guarded, so stern, so biting in his fits of humour that it was hard to guess how he would act if placed in the position of a lover. Or a man who loved.

I know the question I would have asked the Physician now. If I'd had the courage. Do I love Lord Tiberias? Raymond of Tripoli, Prince of Galilee, and Lord Marshal of Jerusalem? Am I mad enough to love leagues above my own degree?

'_You loved a king, and held it no crime.'_

'Physician!' Mirrum span around guiltily. 'Why – I didn't...'

'_I returned once you asked the question._' the late King returned, leaning quietly against a bedpost. _'Once_

_you asked it honestly of yourself. And I say again: you loved me, and you held it no treason. Why hold it so desperate a crime now?'_

'That is not fair. I did not know your station.' Mirrum argued fruitlessly. 'Besides I – it...' she lowered her eyes. 'I only discovered it at a moment when it was –'

'_Rather late,' _The Physician said gently. _'Yes, Dane Lady. Ask me the question you still have not voiced.'_

'I...'

'_Dane Lady, it is plain to everyone but to yourself and, I rather think, the Lord Tiberias,_ _that you do love. And love in earnest. You have a kinship. You understand each other._'

'Yes...' Mirrum said slowly, thinking of the games, the odd surfacing of tenderness there had been. The way Tiberias seemed to finally release the biting Norman bear in his nature in the candlelight – as though he could only be human by dusk, and bear by day. The way the dark eyes_ asked_ things of her, like the creature in her dream, asking for something Mirrum had ignored in her guilt at discovering the Physician as the King. Had there been _no_ Physician...

'He told me it was hard to be the wall!' Mirrum cried, one hand clasped over her mouth. 'Between Pyramus and Thisbe – he told me – he has been telling me! Over and over again – and he saved me! The day of the vigils – and on the way back to Jerusalem... from Kerak...'

'_Yes.'_

'Then... the last question I wanted to ask you... I think...' Mirrum hardly knew what she said, but 'I think the question was, Physician – are _you_ unhappy that I – that I found that I love...' And now it was voiced it was as though the precipice had risen to a mountain that nearly brushed angels' wings, '...Tiberias?'

The Physician looked at her with the blue-grey eyes that had snagged her soul, a small, secret smile brushing his lips. '_No.' _He said simply, with a second smile that felt like a saint's benison. _'I am not unhappy. Besides_ –' A small, impish look came over the quick face, '_Dane Lady, you loved me first. And you loved me as the Physician, as what you thought to be a whole and hearty man. Not as a king! Not out of pity for a cripple! You gave me the only gift I could ever have wanted. Ever. And I am not an avaricious ghoul, to make you stave off the world with what was instead of finding what is. Tiberias loves you, lady. And I am not jealous._' He smiled again. '_I loved you first. That is reward enough for any man.'_


	41. Chapter 41

Mirrum dreaded the coronation of Prince 'Perseus'. She feared it, as one would fear some great trial by fire, or water. It marked the end, after all. The cessation of the old, and the beginning of the first year of the illustrious King Baldwin V – whose name seemed rather too grand for a small, somewhat frail little boy who jumped at loud noises and played fortress with an upturned shoe. Prince Perseus and his make-believe had vanished almost at the same time as the Physician, which was something of a double blow. She would hardly see much of the poor child now. He would be hemmed in with duties and papers and trained amidst a forest of charters and lawsuits, with statesmen who didn't smile, and there would be no _time_ – not even for upturned shoes, perhaps. And perhaps Sybilla would make Baldwin V a strong king, at the cost of the make-believe, and it would be worth the price.

And then there was the other ordeal. The **other**.

It was in vain Alix, impatient, perhaps, with such squirming fits of conscience after Pasque de Rivera, had protested that Jerusalem did not murmur as much as the primly august courts of Burgundy and France at such matter as a woman risen in the world. It was in vain she persuaded, reassured and on occasion even scolded Mirrum for being afraid of public opinion. Mirrum couldn't help it.

As a maid, it had occasionally been the subject of nightmare before. Serving at table, she might break a plate, spill a jug of malmsey over some unwitting courtier, and then all eyes would be on her, with the same expression that they had fixed upon Dame Juliana, that first time at Court. So long ago now, it seemed...

Only now she wasn't cloaked in the blissful anonymity of her station. She was thrown into the light, like a blindworm, and she feared the light would burn with censure...

Mirrum felt a twinge of guilt for that. She was beginning to feel an all-too-powerful pang of kinship for the clucking, awkward Dame Juliana, as Alix brushed her hair, braiding it severely into its linen coif. Forgive me, madam, she prayed. This is harder than it looks, and I am _afraid_...

'Don't!' Alix snapped, throwing a glance at the girl's watery reflection in the small square of silvered glass. Even with the warp of the mirror's glass that blurred countenances sadly, she could see that Mirrum's eyes were closed beneath pale eyelids, the veins pulsing.

Mirrum's pebble-grey eyes snapped open, almost guiltily.

'You were _thinking_ again, weren't you?' Alix said reprovingly. 'Lady's day, madam, this is a _coronation_. A day high in heaven, and with all the Court come to see, and all you can do is mewl as though it were a stoning...'

Mirrum stared vacantly at her braided hair in the glass. She looked different. Alix had secured it tightly into the coif, and with the linen band of the wimple beneath her chin she looked like a pale-faced baby in swaddling bands. Much younger than she really was, like a scared chit of thirteen. And the dark blue of the gown seemed to drain what little colour she had away from her. But, according to Court fashion, she was well clad. Alix sorely lamented the fact that Mirrum would not buy finely worked Damascene silver chains to drape about her and hang from her coif in the Byzantine fashion, but on this Mirrum stood firm. Alix had a highly inflated idea of Mirrum's new-found state. By her own private reckoning, there was enough silver for her to buy her own fish on Fridays if she chose, but nothing to spare for Damascene silver. She did, however, not refuse a small loop of yellow amber beads to swathe about her neck – a small, quiet imitation of Sybilla's own effortless elegance. She looked unobtrusive, Mirrum decided thankfully. Enough to pass muster amongst the Court, she hoped – they might perhaps think her one of the lesser gentry.

'I have not finished!' Alix said sharply, biting her lip as she examined her mistress's face, jerking Mirrum's head back. She had quickly assumed an amused tyranny over Mirrum's bewilderment in the face of the apothecaries and their discreet enhancements for beauty. 'Lord, but you have no more idea than the babe unborn! You look well enough if you wish to be taken for some meek provincial French _nonette –_ have you no wit?' Alix carefully teased a few loose tresses from beneath the coif, so there was a hint of curl whispering at Mirrum's cheeks . 'There. You look much more becoming. The fairness of your hair adds colour to your face – and it stops short of breaking the bounds of your _precious_ propriety...'

Mirrum darted a glare at her. 'I am _not_ Pasque de Rivera. I will not use brazilwood cream to colour my lips, or cochineal to paint my cheeks, and I will _not_ blacken my eyes with charcoal, either, for that matter. That _isn_'t primness.'

She stared at her reflection. Draped in fine linen and the silk, she felt stiff, unsure of that unfamiliar person, Miriam of Montferrand. Miriam of Montferrand would probably look less frightened at her own face, she chided herself, and attempted a smile.

Alix pulled a face at Mirrum's outburst before peering into her mistress' face, at the strained rictus of a smile. 'You're _afraid_,' she said, changing her tone to one of wheedling persuasion. 'Madam. You are not going to change into the Great Whore of Babylon overnight through a little _paint_. You served my lady Sybilla! You know the artifice is just a little play, a little becoming addition to what is already there. There is no shame in it. All the _court_ ladies do. Their _maids_ do...'

'_You_ can, if you like,' Mirrum said stubbornly. Alix was clearly bridling at her new mistress' lack of ostentation; it showed in the frustrated curl of her lip, the blank, exasperated stare. 'But I _won't_.'

'I shall be put to shame.' Alix said bitterly, as a final rejoinder, staring broodingly at her own reflection, and biting her lips to make them red. 'I hope you will be happy, when they ask if I am _madame le non's_ maid-in-waiting...'

'Let them ask!' Mirrum said, pushing back the stool so sharply it fell back with a clatter. 'Any way, Audemande de Vinceaux does not redden her lips or paint her cheeks.' she added, inspired a parting rejoinder. '_And _she is gently-born.'

Alix snorted – but did not venture anything against Aude.

Mirrum missed Aude. She missed her sadly. The days had been so full of bustle that Mirrum had scarce set foot outside her chamber between Alix's fussing and coaching, and her stewards wordless thrustings of the reckonings for Montferrand at her. Mirrum was already furnished with half the dowry Sybilla would have given her in marriage. She was seriously considering throwing it at Alix's head. Aude would know how to manage Alix with words. Dame Juliana would have _beaten _Alix with birch twigs.

No matter. The coronation waited.

Mirrum closed her eyes for a brief moment as, Alix in tow, she bent her steps towards the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, trying to stop the nightmare of disapproving faces playing before her eyelids. Her stomach clenched in a brief contortion of terror, Mirrum pressed forward.

She made her way up the few worn steps – as carefully as ever little Prince Perseus practised _his_ steps for the ceremony itself, and gently tossed a small handful of silver towards the beggars who clustered by the door on such occasions. She had watched Sybilla perform the same action thousands of times at Mass; it felt passing strange to be scattering largesse herself.

There were faces turned towards her as she entered the church. And there were voices that whispered, too. But Mirrum was surprised to find it a curious murmur, rather than a hostile roar of scandal. The crowd at the back of the church was that of the lesser nobles, mingled with some of the richer merchant class. It was almost a kindly regard, and Mirrum felt the weakness in her knees subsiding. There were friendly faces amongst the finery – one round little face in a plum-coloured hood positively _beamed_ at her...

'Don't sit here, mistress!' Alix hissed, plainly disappointed that Mirrum had not strolled to the fore of the church. 'This is _beneath_ you now! You must take your place at the front! The _real _nobles sit there! My lady Patriarchess will be there! You must –'

'What?' Mirrum said distractedly. She smiled nervously back at the round girlish face, who beamed a second time and then...

Mirrum stared. Was the girl _beckoning?_

'_No!_ Not here!' Alix was almost stamping her foot. She was almost wailing. 'If we sit here _I'll_ have to stand with the... the _fat_ kitchen maids and the – the _servants_ of these bourgeois!'

'Go and stand with them, then,' Mirrum said, not looking back at her maid. The girl in the plum-coloured hood was plainly beckoning _her_ over – in fact, she had stood up, one plump arm tangled up in her mantle as she held it out to her.

Alix stared sulkily after her as Mirrum, ignoring her maid, hurried over.

'God be with you, madam?' she said uncertainly.

The pink, round-faced girl smiled. 'And with you too, mistress!' she said cheerily. 'I did hope you would sit with us this day. Mother and I are quite mazed at all this, and we know _no-one_ here. And you seem to know the Court...Oh! I am Isabelle, by the way.' She added, holding out a hand.

Mirrum took it heartily. Isabelle was friendly, unassuming, and she had thrown Mirrum a desperately welcome lifeline. 'Miriam,' she admitted. 'O-of Montferrand.'

'Ay, we heard _that_,' Isabelle said heartily. 'We all wondered what you would be like. Mother thought you would be dark and winsome. I didn't think you would be fair. How pale you are! You must suffer in Jerusalem's heat. I burn readily,' she added, ruefully. 'Mother's fault. She's from Neuchatel. That's her, there.' She said, pointing out an expansive woman in a green robe who was nudging her way along the line of stools towards them, smiling.

'She looks like you,' Mirrum said, pleasantly relaxed by Isabelle's flow of conversation. It took away the gripes in her stomach. 'You are generous to let me sit with you, madam. I thought...' she paused. 'I thought I would not have a welcome –'

'Not welcome you?' Isabelle stared. 'Why not? To be sure, if you'd been some flaunting leman painted like a Jezebel in musk and miniver, there'd have been talk. There always _is _talk. I shouldn't have dared speak to you lest you bite me! But you have a kind face, and you looked so bewildered when you came in...Didn't she, mother?'

Isabelle's mother eased herself on to a stool, nodding amiably at Mirrum.

'What's that?'

'The Lady Miriam, mother. You liked her look when she came in.'

'For shame, Isabelle, love!' her mother said, without much reproof in her voice. Her voice was deep, and had the hoarse, almost Germanic tones of western French. 'I won't say nay though, mistress. You can tell all there is to know of any maiden by the cut of her clothes and the way she bears herself, and if I judge aright, you're no pampered leman, mistress. You'd hear naught bad of yourself if you _were_, mind you. You've sat with us, unlike the _Patriarchess_.' Isabelle's mother looked as if she was going to spit. 'Pah! What is _she_? A draper's wife! A miserable peddler of flea-ridden woollens, rich on her own whoredom.'

'Is she _here_?' Mirrum's curiosity rose. She had heard much on the topic from Alix, and she had a rather queasy interest in the infamous Pasque de Rivera, sin-riddled and covered in jewels.

'You've not _seen_ her?' Isabelle said incredulously. '_How_?'

'Well, how would she?' Isabelle's mother said reasonably. 'She keeps to her fine house with the Lord Patriarch, doesn't she? And her husband, poor wight...That's her, yonder. To the left, by the lord in the scarlet cloak.'

She pointed to a stout, frizzy-haired woman with a powdered countenance, sitting comfortably on her own stool at the very front of the church.

Mirrum stared in fascination. The woman was, without a doubt, over-dressed. Her veil was so thickly crusted with gold work it was a wonder she could turn her head, let alone move, and as she shifted Mirrum caught a glimpse of the Byzantine ornaments Alix had coveted dangling about her face. Her eyebrows were plucked into two ridiculous little crescent moons that left her with a permanent look of surprise. She looked... motherly. Plain. Uncomfortable, but self-complacent nonetheless.

Mirrum stared. 'That's _her_?!'

'Ay,' Isabelle said. 'No beauty, is she? She never was, apparently. _What_ my lord sees in her...' She giggled into her sleeve. 'She goes everywhere he does, though. Besotted, apparently.'

Mirrum with difficulty tried to imagine a besotted Lord Patriarch, and failed, abjectly. The imagination stopped short of such horrors as a besotted Lord Bishop. But the swelling roar of the crowd outside brought the whole congregation hastily to their feet.

The soon-to-be King was passing.

Mirrum stood on tiptoe as the crowd surged forward, anxiously scanning the church for Aude, although she could catch no glimpse of her. That was a pity. But – there was the banquet. Sybilla would not decline a chance to display Aude as court _trobairitz_...

'The King's Grace...!' Isabelle murmured beside her, bringing Mirrum out of her abstraction. 'Is that _truly _him? He looks so small!'

Baldwin looked small. Smaller than usual, and oddly transparent, as though he were made of paper, and one only had to extend a finger to poke a hole right through him. It caused an odd twist of pain in Mirrum's stomach to see him. Somewhere between a surge of bizarre pride that he was treading perfectly up the nave of the Church to the dais above, and a clenching of sorrow that almost brought tears to her eyes.

'Yes, that is the King's Grace.' She murmured, lowering her head. Poor Prince Perseus. He looked so pale and stiff, like a little doll stuffed with sawdust.

Sybilla followed in his wake, her face set into the proud, beautiful, impartial mask Mirrum knew so well. She wore a great cape of yellow damask that pooled behind her, the edges rimmed with ermine, and looked altogether so formal that Mirrum might not have recognised her were it not for the face, the dark, careful blankness of the eyes. Perhaps it was the glitter of the delicate golden fillet that swept her hair from her face, but Sybilla looked all gold and alabaster, and infinitely distant. How odd, Mirrum thought. She knew Sybilla, but from the awed looks on the faces of her companions - plump, pleasant Isabelle and her friendly mother – that they would never believe that Sybilla could be anything other than some remote being, painted in the garish colours of monks and balladeers. They would laugh if Mirrum told them Sybilla was really a restless, wide-eyed creature of trembling passions like anyone else.

Mirrum felt an absurd little glow of pride in that, as she watched the grave ladies of the land carry Sybilla's train solemnly behind her. Sybilla only shared secret Sybilla, private, uncertain vulnerable Sybilla, with people she _trusted_. Mirrum had been one of them. She had been a _friend_, and that was a secret worth the keeping.

Guy de Lusignan followed Sybilla, his ruddy countenance hardly improved by a violent cherry cloak – or the fact he has assumed a look he must have supposed to be one of dignity. It resembled the rather confused look of a bull in heat to Mirrum. She kept her eyes on Guy rather longer than she would ever have done willingly at table, if only to avoid looking at...

Who followed.

_Him._

Mirrum had not seen the Lord of Tripoli since the day Jerusalem had plunged itself into mourning, and she both feared and longed to look on him now. It was that which made her eyes linger desperately on the fluttering edge of Guy de Lusignan's cloak until he passed out of her line of sight, and then - then she had no _choice_ but to look upon Raymond of Tiberias.

He looked...well. Better than he had on the day of _Shāh Māta._ The deep furrows of harsh sorrow had faded from his face, and he had something of that old, panther-like grace Mirrum remembered so well from the day they had first met. The lean-limbed dignity had returned with the advent of little Prince Perseus' ascent to kingship. He cut a rather more noble figure than Guy de Lusignan, Mirrum thought firmly, taking in the sharp lines of his mouth and the faint sketch of grey just beginning to colour his temples as though she were learning him by heart. She wondered if he would glance her way –

And then stopped herself, as sharply as if she had been jostled in the crowd. _That was a_ _pretty foolery, wasn't it?_ A sneering voice said in her head._ Fool. A deluded child, wailing for the moon. Are you sure you weren't mistaken? _

Mirrum tried to block her mind from that thought. But she couldn't deny its power. What if she were mistaken? After all, she had heard him denounce kept women briskly and savagely enough before – in the innocent days of chess and gardens and Sybilla's escapades. _Little goose. As though __**you**__ would be enough to change his mind._

Mirrum resolutely turned with the gaping Isabelle to follow the childish, pale figure who stood so solemnly and quiescently under the bishop's hands, and cut off all further thought. She would tread warily, answer meekly – and hope to high heaven and the Holy Virgin that she would have a chance to speak to Audemande de Vinceaux before she ran mad with the buzz of confusion in her head...

As the crown was gingerly lowered onto little Prince Perseus's small flaxen head, a great throaty roar of approval went up from the crowd that the little boy visibly flinched at. That was Mirrum's one lasting vision of his coronation day; a small boy, starting frightened at the tremendous roar of cheering voices.

And then the banquet.

Mirrum would have gladly dispensed with Alix for this second ordeal had propriety allowed it. She was visibly sulky and ill-tempered at having to stand with the 'common' servants – and also somewhat frustrated with the fact that a mousy upstart with the manners of an anchoress was her mistress instead of the full blown pleasures of Pasque de Rivera. But propriety did not allow, and instead Mirrum was stiffly escorted by her sullen maid-in-waiting into the familiar Palace courtyard. The place Mirrum had first entered the world of Jerusalem.

Lord, how different it is now, Mirrum thought to herself. A great canopy of gauzy blue silk had been unfurled above, shedding a false half-light of embroidered suns and stars down onto the brave company below. There were exquisite garlands of greenery laid out, probably at great expense – although they had already started to wilt in the heat. That would be Sybilla's doing, Mirrum thought to herself, smiling a little. Sybilla, with her love of the French court and their pageants. She had overlooked the fact that she ruled a country of stinging sand and barren rock, where blooms died almost within an hour in the oppressive heat. But it was magnificent, beautiful, and everything a coronation banquet should be.

Except for the people at it. Mirrum had fervently wished Isabelle and her mother were attending the feast. But, as the _bourgeoisie_ merchant class, they were not invited. It was with a pang of deep regret that Mirrum saw them leave.

She dragged her thoughts back to the present. A squire respectfully ushered her over to a seat at one of the lower tables, just beneath the high table. Perhaps it was not done to be too early to these gatherings, Mirrum thought worriedly. There was scarcely anyone there, apart from a few graceful figures taking a turn in the small yellow silk pavilion at the centre of the court, laughing at the viol-player ensconced there. Mirrum sat there unhappy, unwilling to approach anyone lest she break some unwritten social rule...

'You look tired.' A familiar voice said behind. Mirrum turned about with a soft cry of glad recognition.

'Lady Aude!'

It was indeed Aude. But a very different Audemande from the last time Mirrum had seen the Little Dove of Vinceaux. She was dressed in a warm scarlet gown that sharply contrasted with the pallor of her face; the red bright against an almost shocking white. Her dark hair was braided with scraps of red and gold and wound back into a filleted caul that scraped back the dark locks from her forehead – and yet, for all the grandeur, her face was still the soft, serious oval Mirrum remembered. A touch more sadness in the face, Mirrum thought – but a little more determination in the chin.

'Lady, no more.' Aude said simply, gently whisking her gown beneath the table as she sat beside Mirrum. 'We are equals, you and I, are we not?'

'Yes...' Mirrum said gratefully, fidgeting anxiously with her sleeves. 'Oh, _Aude_. I wanted to see you for so long! I've been so very miserable and wretched I could die! I thought I _would_ die, to have to come to the banquet and –'

'Tush!' Aude looked alarmed at the outpouring Mirrum threatened to make at table, in full sight of the steady trickle of lords and ladies that were flooding through the door. 'Come here – there's a pleasaunce just beyond the fountain if you wish to speak... My God, Mirrum! Has it been _so_ hard?'

Out of sight of the table, Mirrum could have cried – and heartily, too. But she felt a faint pang of pride that she should seem so helpless before the Lady Audemande.

'N-no.' She said, biting her underlip hard to keep the quivering at bay. 'It has been more... _strange_ than anything else. But oh, so horrible! I thought everyone would hate me! I feel _wicked_.' She added, with a shiver. 'I am a double hypocrite, Aude! I never realised it until this day. I was afraid everyone would think me nothing more than a lewd _kept woman_, like Pascal de Rivera, when I was not, and then everyone was so _kind_ today, at the coronation! And then I realised I wanted...' Mirrum rose from her half-crouch of abject misery stood bolt-upright, almost on tiptoe, a strange sort of defiant pride convulsing her thin frame. 'I _want_ to be a kept woman. I _lie_ when I think it better to be honest. I'd rather be Pascal de Rivera herself if it meant _he...'_ Mirrum wavered, unsteadily, and then half-collapsed, not daring to look at Aude's expression.

It was a pity Mirrum had not looked up. Aude's bemused expression had not altered – except that she fought back a slight half-smile.

'I presume you speak of the Lord Tiberias?' she said, as calmly as if Mirrum had made a trifling remark on the colour of the sky.

'_Yes_!'

Aude sat down lightly by the lip of the fountain. 'You are a gentlewoman ennobled by the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with lands and property. He is much the same. So far in the eyes of God and man you are equal...'

Mirrum looked up at Lady Audemande with a disbelieving expression. 'He cannot love me!'

'There are many who would say otherwise.' Aude said firmly. 'Myself included.' She looked at Mirrum's desperate expression and quickly ran her mind over the old tales, wondering what unhappy seed had thrown such strong roots of doubt over the girl's mind. She found one. All too quickly.

'Has some malicious serpent whispered the old tale of his wife?'

Mirrum's world rocked, as though the sun had turned her giddy. Audemande had to quickly reach out so she did not fall and haul her to a seat at the fountain, already cursing her misfortune. Mirrum had plainly _not_ known.

'Wife....?' Mirrum whispered. 'But...'

'You did not know Lord Tiberias had a wife?' Audemande said in astonishment. 'That is how he got his title! Prince of Galilee...'

Mirrum's eyes filled with tears. 'He is wed!'

'_No_!' Aude's grip was suddenly painfully tight. 'Not anymore. She _died_... Now, _listen_. Tiberias did wed, but he was young – scarcely more than your age. Less, perhaps! It's the fashion of nobles – he had no choice. It was a marriage of politics. And I don't think Eschiva of Bures was particularly ill-suited to him-'

'They were in love?' Mirrum asked. Like all girls who are a little crossed in love, she was greedily interested in hearing it all – as though she were scratching at a scab. Aude looked at her, and she fell silent.

'No.' Aude said. 'It was an arranged marriage. You may not have heard the old tales, but Lord Tiberias was something of an _awkward_ youth – well enough as a tactician, but somewhat – unable to pretend something he did not feel, I think. And then, within two years...'Aude looked disbelievingly at the blank expression on Mirrum's face. 'How can you not _know_ this, Mirrum? I had this from Sybilla's lips herself!'

Sybilla probably _had_ told her, Mirrum realized with a pang. But it was in the days when she ignored all in her blindness to everything but the Physician. 'Within two years – what?'

'Tiberias was captured in a skirmish,' Aude said patiently. 'Defending his lands. He spent nigh on _eight_ years rotting in a Saracen prison until he was ransomed back– and when he returned, his youth spent...' Audemande stared at Mirrum. 'Eschiva had _died_, Mirrum. Died before he had a chance to truly know the woman he married. But cruel tongues have a way with twisting half-truths into _damnable_ lies, and I think the accusation that she died broken-hearted hit him... hard.' Audemande paused. 'From your face, I thought some clacking gossip had told you some tale of him murdering his wife through heartbreak. I am sorry you did not know, but I am happy to relieve your ignorance.' Audemande brushed at her skirts, before fixing Mirrum with a hard gaze. 'Don't you _see_? He is quite as free to love you as if you were a Holy Roman Princess, Mirrum, because he has f_ulfilled_ the bounds of propriety. He has been bound in a political marriage, disliked it, and lost any chance at an understanding that might have meant...more. Burdened, nephews clamouring for his lands, and, as I can read it, desperately unhappy – he now turns to _you_.'

There had been no condemnation of Mirrum's half-hysteria in Audemande's eyes before. But there was something there now that made Mirrum stand up a little straighter, a little taller, and compose her face into something more awake than the distracted mask of misery she had worn before. It was as though something _commanded_ her to show her mettle.

Mirrum meant to show it.

Audemande was saying (with the true subtlety of a poet) that in the face of _that_ – a youth withered in a foreign prison, a marriage that must have been a hair shirt woven of distance, embarrassment, and the inept misunderstandings of two strangers – disappointment, death, _loneliness_...

And Mirrum made craven mewling about doubting his love! If the Lady Audemande saw it, Mirrum trusted it without question. She stood up, making a deep, thankful obeisance to the Little Dove that seemed to quite take the lady trobairitz by surprise.

'Thank you. You allow me to see truly, my lady Audemande. I-'

'Hold!' commanded Audemande, teasingly. 'We shall be missed at the table if we hold court here much longer. All Jerusalem will think there is some desperate confederacy between us.' She squeezed Mirrum's hand. 'Courage. Speak honestly, and Eros' arrow will find its mark.'

**I know, I'm evil with cliffhangers. Sorry for the terrible lack of updates! Life intervenes, unfortunately, as does the dreaded spectre of essay deadlines and writer's block. **


	42. Chapter 42

If you had asked the Lord Tiberias on rising whether he felt any particular unease, any slight pinch of uncertainty about the coming of the boy-king's coronation, he would probably have laughed the suggestion away. But it would have been laughed away with more forced gusto than the question warranted – and he would probably have retreated to the wine-pitcher before the insolent questioner was more than three paces from the door. But he did not drink. Today was no day for wine. Indeed, there had been a time, Tiberias distantly remembered, when he drank but little wine. Godfrey had, as he recalled, been the one who changed that. A wild night – had there been some victory, some great triumph? They had both been in Jerusalem whilst Amalric was away campaigning in his Egyptian wars, and it had been Godfrey, face flushed, who urged him out to the dancing and pageantry in the Armenian quarter . Godfrey had been quite made quite silly with happiness; indeed, his height and striking open face had won him many a dance, and he had proposed a flagon of palm wine in celebration– and then one had seeped into three, and they had staggered back to the palace singing a ribald song in Norman-French that earned them both a beating. Godfrey had somehow acquired a maiden's garter, of all things tied about his sleeve. He remained quite perplexed about it until the girl came to claim it the following morning. Godfrey had a further beating from his lord and an hour's long lecture on the sins of fornication from his priest.

How dizzy we were, Tiberias thought to himself. How drunk on youth.

How hopeful.

There was certainly no outward sign of any disquiet stamped upon the Lord of Tripoli. This was because he had taken pains to hide any trace despite – perhaps – a faint violet shadow daubing his eyelids. Apart

This was because Raymond of Tripoli had slept but ill; he had been mercilessly taking stock of himself. Staring, if you like, into that harsh mirror of the mind, which offers no palliative attractions; which never flatters, and never lies. He had confronted his one and forty years, stared down the countenance which had never quite pleased _him_, for all it had its uses in a world of war-making and politics – and he had even glanced, somewhat blankly, at the puckered scar left by the glancing blow of a scimitar, which marked his eyes and gave him the expression of a scabbed old carrion bird. And the ill-sorted leg – not gout, or arthritis, but a relic from a bad fall from a horse, years ago. The leg had not mended properly through the meddlings of a pompous Frankish bone-setter – a very different matter from the courteous respect of the Saracen physicians. Tiberias shook off the fleeting memory and turned his thoughts inwardly again, searching for something – anything, perhaps, to convince himself that he was not playing a fool at one-and-forty, and that he was not…

Well! Tiberias attempted to shrug the shade off, and gazed half-sightlessly at a few chickens scratching aimlessly in the dust below his window. He bestowed quite as much interest on the chickens as he did on his squire, who was standing respectfully by the fire, clothes in hand. He did not look forward with any great anticipation to the coronation of Baldwin V, it must be said. It was too painful in the reminder that he had stood witness at another boy-king's mockery of a coronation long ago, and that nothing truly changed whilst it was governed by the petty humours of little humanity.

But… there was perhaps, somewhere in the weary Lord of Tripoli's breast, a little room for hope. A small plucking of the heartstrings that struck a jolting, painful chord whenever he thought of fair pale-gold hair, or a nail-bitten hand outstretched over a gaming board. Tiberias had also, in that unsilvered glass within himself, stared down the one-and-forty years for any sign of a similar feeling.

Eschiva? Eschiva had been tall, and she had been russet-haired. She had not been ill-made, but she had – and this had baffled the young Raymond of Tripoli – been dispassionate. That him. The world might somersault as it pleased, but Eschiva remained serene, unmoved and, Raymond of Tripoli had suspected – without much character. She had as much opinion as a statue of the Virgin – and for a coltish, reckless, intense dark-haired boy – naturally passionate, already learning, somewhat awkwardly, to constrain his passions, to be wed to that complacent oval face and orderly habit was a little as though he had been given in marriage to a virgin martyr. It was impossible to keep up a conversation with such a demure, proper creature, let _alone_ ...Well. Whilst Tiberias had dutifully paid the marital debt, it had been an uncomfortable awkward business of chilly fumblings and a dutiful tolerance on the part of Eschiva that had thrown a smothering pall over any faint feeble flickering of ardour there might have been. It was but a short step to a cold marriage bed. He could not understand a creature who had no opinions, no tastes beyond those drilled into her by her mother. Well. She had loved him in her fashion, Tiberias reflected, unhappily. She had managed his household, and mended his shirts with the smug satisfaction of a girl playing at being goodwife, but there had not been the flicker of understanding between them. Love had not entered the world of Raymond of Tripoli before now, and if he heard its tread now...

He trembled at its passage.

The squire – one of many, a plain, knock-kneed Flemish squire whose accent was laughed at by the Norman brats, noticed that my lord Tiberias was a little more meticulous in his dress than was usual with state occasions –certainly with _him_. He fiddled with his points and laces like a gangling schoolboy rather than a man twice Prince of Galilee and Lord of Tripoli – and kept abruptly stopping his hand from reaching automatically for the wine-pitcher, an occasion worthy of remark in itself. He called for water, instead.

The coronation in itself would have been a dull, empty ceremony that Tiberias recited as mechanically as he did his _Aves_ and _Credos_, were it not for the fact that he was quite as agitated as Mirrum. The state of the man was agonised. Tiberias had planned on the coronation banquet as the culmination of a courtship he scarcely knew how to begin, and felt half-shamed of proposing. There were more grey hairs on Tiberias' head than he cared to count, although it still grew dark as ever; a distant reminder he was no sprightly youth. But that did not lessen the horror Tiberias had; perhaps seeing Mirrum's face collapse into horror at the very suggestion – or, perhaps more bluntly (although scarce less easy to swallow) a direct rebuffal. He did not _quite_ believe in that, but there was the distant spectre of Mirrum - _before_ he knew her, face blank in the guarded indifference only flung to strangers.

'_I'm not to be your mistress, am I?'_

God's blood, that was a chilling, ghastly thought. If she asked again, Tiberias would hardly know the answer himself. But he was repulsed by the idea of the kind of base, avaricious coupling that my Lord Patriarch and the likes of Reynaud de Chatillon and his string of mistresses represented. The strange discordant jangling of his nerves with respect to Mirrum confused his ready wits. What _did_ he want? Love pure and untainted was the jongleurs' stock-in-trade – something for children and fools to think on whilst staring soulfully at the stars – imagining themselves as Abelard and Heloise, no doubt. Tiberias didn't quite think he would be content to chastely hold hands across a gaming-board. He wanted more than that. He was half-frightened at the thought of Mirrum as a wife, in case she became the chill, gently inflexible creature that he had once called by the same name. But... it was an oddly beguiling image, that thought of _wife_ when defined by the trembling cloud of silvered hair and the nail-bitten fingers – the slight figure that trembled with passion far more vivid than her own blanched hues. Perhaps ...it came quite suddenly to Tiberias, but perhaps... Mirrum, chattering away, crouched over a second Catullus' _Carmine_ – only one of _his_ gift this time (Tiberias, you may notice, was not entirely exempt from jealousy), and instead of the comfortless Lord Marshal's office, they would be ensconced in his mother's old rooms in Tripoli. Perhaps he might even be at her elbow, one hand stroking that pale cloud of hair...

No. Better. Mirrum, flushed with weariness and nodding drowsily, half-sleeping before the solar fire on a winter's night in Tripoli, held in his arms – head cradled gently against his chest...

Tiberias jerked himself sharply out of that particular vision. The coronation. Think only of that. It might well not even come to so much. It might not be anything at all.

Nevertheless. The Lord Marshal hardly noticed that he had nearly torn his gloves across the palm through curling and uncurling his taut fingers so often.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was crowded – and in that heaving sea of faces, it was hard, very hard, to spot even a single countenance of the Court that he recognised, apart from the line of nobles crowded at the fore of the church like a line of silvered saints. Although he displayed no particular interest in the usual crowd, Tiberias was already anxiously surveying their faces with a cautious turn of the corner of his eye. There was no slight figure sat at the fore of the church. During the long ceremony – the pigeon-like murmurings in Latin of the officiating bishop, the anointing, Tiberias scanned every face within his sight, row by row, as though dogged arithmetic could help him in the matter. He ought to be giving more attention to the boy-king, true – who kept casting dismayed glances toward Sybilla, poor wight. But he was quite unsettled. Perhaps Mirrum had not attended, after all. Perhaps she was ill. A fever...

Fever had robbed Tiberias, some little time before he eased himself of captivity in Syria, of his russet-haired wife. He had had time to think on his wife with some more fondness than he had ever had for her when in her presence – trotting, good, placid Eschiva, and he had even been spurred by the hope that it would not matter so much. Imprisonment may do much to a man, and Raymond of Tripoli left his prison wiser than he had entered it – that perhaps he had misjudged Eschiva. That perhaps she felt there _was_ nothing wanting in their marriage, and he owed her his friendship, at least – and if she wanted nothing more, it was for him to endure the deficiency _he_ felt, if she did not.

But his good intentions hadn't mattered, anyway. Eschiva had quietly died some little time before his release – six months or so. No word had reached him in Syria. Eschiva had died, and he had not _known_...

Mercifully for Tiberias, as his mind followed this particular train of thought, his eyes caught a familiar countenance in the crowd – although without the unruly cloud of fair hair, today. She was upon the stools with the merchants and the lesser nobles. Why was she there? She was waiting woman to the Queen Regent of Jerusalem as well as landed gentlewoman. She could have taken a seat with the great if she had liked...

But she _hadn't_ liked. The pale child had slipped quietly in where she would make the least stir, and where she would be at ease without breaking her new place, and Tiberias inwardly applauded her for her prudence. But how grave she looked beneath her coif! Without the pale hair, Tiberias would scarcely have known her – especially in the coils of her cap, which gave her an altered appearance. She seemed all eyes. And she looked a little frightened – but appreciative enough of her surroundings, and she gazed with a pensive aspect on the small stick-figure of the illustrious Baldwin the Fifth, who looked terrified out of his childish wits.

Tiberias kept silently daring – nay, _urging_ her to look in his direction. Just once. But she never so much as glanced his way. He had no idea Mirrum had seen him long before he had even thought to gaze about the church, and had tormented herself accordingly.

So when Tiberias finally bent his steps, after much inward unrest, towards the feast, he found the room but half-filled, and Sybilla awaiting the room to be filled so she could make her token entrance with her newly-crowned son. She looked on contentedly.

'They will talk of this day,' she said proudly, 'For years to come. The advent of Baldwin the Fifth.'

'They will,' Tiberias acquiesced. Sybilla had a hectic, strange flush upon her face that seemed to betray her fatigue .You wouldn't have known it from her bearing. Sybilla bore herself like a triumphant Amazon queen.

'It will be splendid,' Sybilla said, almost to herself. 'There will be a time of peace.'

'Peace, lady?' Tiberias could hardly help himself. Sybilla was surely dreaming if she imagined that the precarious peace could be maintained _now_. She was a fine stateswoman in her own right, and a practised politician, but Sybilla was not her brother. She had a little too much passion that seeped into the wrong places at inopportune times.

'Ay, _peace_.' Sybilla said firmly, disregarding the questioning tone the Lord Marshal had adopted. 'There will be a golden, prosperous age of Jerusalem. There will be tournaments and great pageants and progresses. There will be alliances between Rome and Jerusalem, and France. And England, maybe! They say the Curtmantle is eager to prove himself by taking the Cross. There will be trade, great royal marriages that shall seal the fate of the Holy City – the Holy Roman Empire itself, perhaps! Mayhap even Salahuddin will lay down his arms and join us in a land which will truly flow with milk and honey...'

Sybilla's tone was dreamy, almost as though she was lulling herself to sleep with a fairytale. A dangerous strain for a queen planning the future, Tiberias thought uneasily. It tempted Heaven to cast down brimstone on Sybilla's golden age of the great and glorious Jerusalem. Perhaps it would exist, who knew? There might well be a place where great galleons furled their sails carrying gold and jasper to build the walls of Sybilla's celestial realm. But until those ships reached harbour, better toil in the dung of reality.

The court was all but filled now. Tiberias left Sybilla to await her entrance as golden queen of Jerusalem - as proud would-be Amazon of Christendom – and took his place in the more prosaic ranks of the nobles at high table.

Not however, without noting Mirrum, seated not a few feet away on one of the lower tables. This was not quite by accident. Raymond of Tripoli was not a man above making his chances, when they came within his grasp.

* * *

Mirrum found the banquet pleasing, to her great surprise. Sybilla's entrance had been a masterstroke in queenly invention; as little Prince – wait. No. King, now. As the _new _King set an example in infant gravity, Sybilla soared serenely behind him like a bird of paradise, golden damask wings spread wide. She was a perfect Queen, Mirrum thought admiringly. If she'd seen this a year ago, she'd have thought herself well and truly lost in a romaunt...

Perhaps it had lost a _little_ of its magic, Mirrum reflected inwardly. A year ago, she'd have thought it magic. Now, she appreciated the artistry, knowing what care Sybilla took with the smiles she coined to her husband for the court's appreciation. She'd seen behind. She knew it was illusion. Even the banquet itself was not the trial of courtly manners she had feared it would be, although she couldn't help but feel a palpable twinge of guilt whenever a servant refilled her wine cup, or proffered a dish of quail. That would have been _her,_ not above a year ago. She found herself eying the ranks of blue-clad serving-women, looking for a matching scruffy crop of ill-combed hair and dusty cap...

Besides, how did one _eat_ quail, anyway?

She watched the way Aude deftly seemed to turn the bird almost inside out, fastidiously plucking the fragile bones from the flesh as though pulling silver pieces from a purse. She did it almost absently, Mirrum noted enviously. Clearly Audemande de Vinceaux was quite used to eating stuffed quail.

She attempted a pale imitation of the _trobairitz'_s attitude herself – until Aude caught her watching and laughed aloud.

'You needn't copy me,' she said, discreetly gesturing around the table. 'Look! Everyone eats according to their own fashion. Jerusalem, remember? A country of all customs! No-one will look down on you for not practising the fashions of a French court.'

'God be thanked!' Mirrum said fervently, visibly relieved. 'I was mortally afraid of making a fool of myself...' She grinned in Aude's direction.

Audemande wasn't looking. She was staring absent-mindedly ahead of her, fingers half-arrested in reaching for her wine cup. By following her gaze, Mirrum rather puzzledly reached the seated figure of a fair-haired knight – and then looked down at her quail again. It was impolite to stare, after all.

But nonetheless, Mirrum's gaze sidled in the same direction as the Little Dove, if only to direct a appraising stare at the sort of man who could attract such intense interest from Audemande de Vinceaux.

He was not exactly _handsome_, Mirrum decided after much thought – at least, not in the obvious sense of the word. Whilst given a strong countenance (for the firm set of chin certainly denoted resolution), the knight did not have that arrogance that his brothers in arms seemed to share. He seemed to inhabit his own space at the table, rather than raucously share in the general tumult – and, Mirrum noted approvingly, he was not a knight to be jostled to one side. And he did not hair his hair curled in the ridiculous long Norman fashion that Guy de Lusignan followed. He had it cropped close; thick, pale yellow hair. Occasionally he made an quick, impatient movement to brush it from his eyes.

Beside her, Aude stirred slightly, and Mirrum noticed a gentle, vaguely impish smile spread over the face of the court poet. The fair-haired knight was staring just as intently at Audemande as she was surreptitiously looking at him. In fact Mirrum wasn't entirely sure that they _weren't_ playing a subtle game of wits with their looks – Aude pretending she wasn't looking at all, the fair-haired knight blatantly besieging Audemande with a quiet glance that rather dared her to carry on the pretend....

Alas, if only Mirrum had been able to apply what she saw with Aude so readily to herself! But Mirrum had not the same degree of self-knowledge that Audemande possessed. She was still too much an observer; hardly noticing that, as a pawn, she had crossed to the other side of the board safely and was now a greater player in the game. Indeed, the eyes of Aude's fair-haired swain seemed quite sharp enough to notice Mirrum's gaze if she stared too long, so Mirrum hastily looked along the table –

And met the gaze of Guimar de Bois-Gilbert, who was seated next to him. Her luck couldn't have been _worse_ if Mirrum had tried. It would have been better to stare at the apish drunken tricks of Reynaud de Chatillon than meet _that_ sullen gaze. And, more unlucky yet, he glowered at her in a vague, resentful manner that seemed to suggest he found personal insult in the fact she had looked in his direction.

It hadn't been through any merit of _his_, Mirrum thought viciously. She could find better ways to occupy her time than by staring at the countenance of a spoilt man-child like Guimar de Bois-Gilbert. But what was this? As though every pore in his face rebelled at the act, Guimar forced a sort of uneasy grimace to his face that might have passed for a smile – if Mirrum had been blind, perhaps. What had he done that for? He didn't need to – _what-_

But Mirrum's uneasy curiosity had to wait. Sybilla had risen, and clapped her hands for music.

'Come, let there be dancing!' she said, laughing the brittle, clear laugh Mirrum knew so well. Everyone shuffled to their feet, awkwardly...

Or not, in Audemande's case. Mirrum had scarce time to marvel how swiftly the fair-haired knight had managed to make his way to her side before Aude was whisked off into a spin of colour, wheeling away from her like a laughing child's kite...

'Lady Miriam!'

Sybilla was purposefully crossing the hall towards her, golden damask wings outspread – as was (_God's blood! _No!) Guimar de Bois-Gilbert, who had draggingly risen to his feet as though he was a puppet dragged headfirst by his strings. Sybilla was tugging him on – and they were both closing in on Mirrum.

There was no escape within the bounds of propriety that she could possible make. And the realisation hit Mirrum like a sack of lime to the stomach that Sybilla was in all likelihood holding true to her word, and presenting Mirrum with a suitable choice for...

For _husband_?

Mirrum was still mentally recoiling at the prospect when Sybilla spoke.

'You are quite the mysterious damozel, it seems!' Sybilla smiled, as Mirrum made her courtesy. 'Young Bois-Gilbert has been begging me on bended knee to introduce you to him...'

_That_ was a lie, Mirrum thought scornfully. "Young" Bois-Gilbert looked as though he would rather have dragged himself over red-hot coals than ask anything of the kind. His grimace was nailed to his face again.

Mirrum lowered her eyes, indignant colour mounting to her cheeks. Sybilla would have to fight to make her play this game with _Bois-Gilbert_, of all people.

'We have met before,' she said briefly.

'Really? How intriguing.' Sybilla said brightly. 'You may wonder why Bois-Gilbert is at the feast. He has been knighted at the celebrations. A new-made warrior.'

Of course, Mirrum reflected dismally. At the coronation, knighthoods had been handed out like largesse to the scores of eager squires. It would have to Bois-Gilbert, new-made equal and fortune-seeker.

'He is placed somewhat unusually,' Sybilla said, her smile faintly twisted. 'I have been...asked to recommend him to you as the flower of chivalry. He is heir to his family estates, though a younger son – his elder brother has taken the cross as a Knight Templar...'

Ah, Mirrum thought, noticing the slight flash of Sybilla's eyes. So Sybilla did not like him either. This was at _Guy'_s instigation.

'I am also a man readily won by beauty and grace when it appears in so fair a form,' Guimar de Bois-Gilbert said mechanically, letting the words fall like pebbles from between his teeth. 'If you would dance the pavane with me I would count it –

'Excellent,' Sybilla said quickly, not staying to hear Mirrum's answer, and throwing her an apologetic glance over one shoulder.

Mirrum waited until Sybilla was out of earshot before darting a glare at Bois-Gilbert.

'I thank you, but no.' She said icily. 'I am in no frame of mind for dancing...'

'T'is not for _you_!' Bois-Gilbert said scornfully. 'I only follow court fashion, and say the pleasing thing when it is most wanted....'

'Oh?' Mirrum's fingernails dug into her palm. 'So, you wish to dance the pavane with a _rent roll_, or a coffer of silver. I'm sure there are some other heiresses who will please you _better_ than a base-born serving woman.'

Bois-Gilbert turned puce, swelled, and seemed about to say something decidedly unknightly – and probably a word extra on the exact measure of Mirrum's 'beauty and grace' – when he stopped dead and turned ashen white.

'My – my lord...' he spluttered. _'_I...'

Mirrum felt a shade cross the nape of her neck, and trembled slightly. It was an involuntary movement, just like the abrupt colour rising like the breath of a hot oven to her face.

To Tiberias' infinite contempt, the wretched stripling actually attempted to _rally_.

'The- lady – has promised a dance to me –' he said, bravely attempting to meet the Lord of Tripoli's gaze with a stare of his own.

It failed, as an attempt at holding his own. Whatever Bois-Gilbert standing might be amongst the squires, with his new-minted knighthood, it did not stand up to the scrutiny of a man such as Tiberias. He stood still for the space of two minutes, cast an agonised glance about the banqueting hall, and suddenly turned on his heel with an apologetic bow to Tiberias (none to Mirrum by the bye), and made an undignified retreat to the pleasaunce with the disgruntled air of a jackal driven off by a lion.

Mirrum dimly discerned that she was being gently led from the ribald merriment of the coronation feast, but it was with a shiver that she realised quite what that meant. It meant there could be no pretence any more of looking at cloaks, no avoidance, no games. And the worst of it was she hardly knew the end of it.


	43. Chapter 43

The Lord of Tripoli had barely noticed that he had turned towards the cooler air of the cloister with all the grim stance of Death himself. What good-temper he had possessed before the ill-starred encounter had been sharpened into a thin thread of silent, freezing anger directed alternately at the luckless Bois-Gilbert and Sybilla whenever his mind chanced to light on either of them. Sybilla, in _particular_, garnered more inward ire.

How dare she. How _dare_ _she_... Tiberias had, perhaps, conveniently forgotten the fact that Sybilla sought a husband for Mirrum on his own assurance that he and the maid from the North were not illicit lovers snatching forbidden trysts in sheltered cloisters. That seemed a veritable lifetime ago now. He had scarcely known _what_ he felt – perhaps a little cloaked self-disgust at his own manoeuvrings to place Mirrum on a footing equal to himself. A firmly rooted hatred of the petty self-furtherance of court had made him despise himself, for a short while. It seemed an unworthy, sneaking action. Unworthy to his own sense of self, and doubly unworthy to Mirrum. She was made of better stuff than the repulsive common broadcloth of court ambition. But all this paled into insignificance when Tiberias remembered that Sybilla rated Mirrum so cheaply – had given her worth at seventy-five paltry, miserable silver _zecchins_ and a chattering popinjay for a husband...

More pertinently, the sullen hangdog villain of a squire known as Guimar Bois-Gilbert. A knuckle-dragging, thick-set scion of the Bois-Gilberts of Normandy. Tiberias knew the brother, if distantly. A boon companion of Guy in the midst of his Templar boors. The name already left a distinctly sour taste in Tiberias' mouth without the introduction of a seedling brute Bois-Gilbert in miniature, waiting his chance for furtherance...

And with Sybilla's _blessing_. Christ's wounds, with her _blessing_.

This, in particular, almost goaded the Lord of Tripoli into senseless, directionless fury. After all her earnest speeches of finding kind husbands for her ladies, Sybilla had found Guimar de Bois-Gilbert. And for _Mirrum_...

Tiberias' breath seemed unaccountably to swell and catch in his throat, choking him for a moment at the thought of this mocking spectre of a marriage made in hell.

Bois-Gilbert reeked of the mindless fists-first brand of husbandry Sybilla should have known too well. He was a boy-tyrant waiting his chance, and that Sybilla nudged Mirrum over to_ him_ as a placatory sop to Guy's political arrogance...

Perhaps it was not just that. For all his thick, brutish hide, a treacherous voice whispered within Tiberias, Guimar de Bois-Gilbert was _young_. And had a certain heavy ox-like comeliness that would not serve him ill amongst ladies, as well as a baseless confidence in his own merit. Tiberias' anger, truly, was sparked by the fact that a Sybilla-_sanctioned_ rival had never even crossed his mind. A vague, formless, maybe-rival of the future is an easy victory. It is not quite so easy to overcome the weapons of that base betrayer Jealousy when he appears in the form of youth, even if said youth is the graceless form of Bois-Gilbert.

One and forty years had never felt quite so pained as at the prospect of an ape matched to-

Mercifully, Tiberias' black mood softened a little as he cast a glance down towards the oval of Mirrum's face, softened a little by a strand of errant fair hair that escaped from her voluminous wimple. She was still scowling distractedly after the luckless squire, a flush of displeasure colouring her pale cheeks.

Now, had the Lord of Tripoli not been quite so wracked upon his own torturous doubts, and just a little more discerning, he might have attributed the pink flag of hectic emotion on Mirrum's cheeks as positive encouragement. But he was as nearly agitated as she in his own fashion. After studying Mirrum's face a little while longer, as though allowing himself a glance of her face in repose, he threw an uneasy glance towards the raucous noise and heat of the court and turned away; although not without silently possessing himself of Mirrum's hand. It felt quite cool in his own.

Yes, cool. That was what was needed. Away from the heavy, humid air that seemed over-scented and the hectic motion of a court in full festivity...

It would be better in the cool...

The Lord Marshal of Jerusalem turned almost blindly away from the dissonant sputter of the music, setting his face to the breeze blowing from the cloistered walk as he led Mirrum by the hand – courteously enough, but with an almost wild stare that suggested, for the moment, he hardly saw her face at all.

And Mirrum?

Mirrum, oddly enough, at this moment of crisis about which she had fretted the coronation feast away for, found herself quite calm. A little apprehensive, yes – but it was not without a strangely electrifying charm of its own. It would be different to the old, easy times between them, this snatched interview in the dark. It would be so _important_, this stolen moment; and it felt very idle and swooning of her, Mirrum reflected dreamily, to be thinking only how warm Tiberias' hand felt enveloping hers. She ought to be thinking of what to say – or rather, how a well-born gentlewoman would respond to the overtures of a feudal overlord. That detestable, fictitious creature Miriam of Montferrand would have had a world of glib answers sat trippingly on her tongue. Mirrum had half-fashioned her new namesake into the hateful perfect antithesis of everything she felt she lacked –dark-haired, mocking. Exquisitely, cruelly, French. Fashionable. Courteous, in the stiflingly correct manner of a lady from a _romaunt_. Winning...

But, strange triumph indeed! _That_ Miriam of Montferrand had not won love for herself by being anything of those things. Plain Mirrum of doubtful Saxon descent had, and she, for tonight, didn't care about thinking ahead, Mirrum thought, in a strange fit of distraction. Or how unseemly it would have been for that other Miriam of Montferrand to do as she did now. Why, how callused his fingers were! The skin felt quite hardened, almost leathery - strange to the touch at first. Mirrum found herself dwelling on that quite foolishly...

But where were they? They had come through so many different passages that Mirrum hardly knew where she was, at first. A smaller, paved courtyard, with a better-kept fountain that murmured softly in the background...

Of course, Mirrum realised. It was, by a chance streak of Nature's irony, the courtyard next to the offices of the Lord Marshal – darkened, now, except by the flickering, uncertain light of the torches. Tiberias had needed to speak, as it were, on his own ground.

But would he speak? The Lord of Tripoli had certainly brought her here – and in the dim half-darkness Mirrum faintly discerned that he turned a little towards her as though to say something, before thinking better of it and turning his face away. She felt her fingers released.

For a brief moment Mirrum waited, uncertain quite of what to do, or say. Surely _he_ would speak first. Was _she_ supposed to...? Should she...?

That initial impression of Tiberias as an impatient beast of prey instantly sprang to mind as she watched him uneasily stalking nearly the length of the courtyard. Her nerves nearly strangled her. Had she _misjudged..._?

Tiberias abruptly turned towards her, his face obscured in shadow.

'How long has that mewling pup been yapping his discourtesies at you?' he demanded, a dark note of anger playing in the growl of his voice. 'By God, had I spied him sooner, I should have broken his head against the paving stones-!'

Mirrum's shoulders sagged in relief, despite the barely stifled rage struggling in Tiberias' words. He was not angry with _her_. Jealousy was stamped on his oaths as plainly as if he had shouted it into the night.

'Bois-Gilbert?' she said. Her heart leapt into her mouth, making her splutter words like an overfilled wine cup. 'My lord, Bois-Gilbert has but followed me for the space of three minutes. He was never anything but disdainful and sneering when I was but a _serving-wench_.'

'Don't say that,' Tiberias snapped.

Mirrum faltered, words snagging on the night air. 'Say what, my lord?' she said meekly.

'Nay... I...' Tiberias seemed momentarily at a loss for words. His hands traced a shape on the air, as though clutching the still deep-rooted anger fast within his fingers. 'What I _meant _to say, girl-child, is that you were no serving-wench then, and you are not...now. I-' He paused. 'Is that how it stands with you and Bois-Gilbert, truly? You do _not_...' Tiberias was truly thankful that no-one could see his expression. 'He would be considered...well-favoured. And he is young. Sybilla thinks him an apt choice...'

'My _lord_...' Mirrum took a step forward, pebble-coloured eyes huge in her pale spoon-shaped face. 'Even_ if_ Sybilla thinks him an apt choice, I must fail her, for once, in this.' She said, with a feeble attempt to speak calmly. 'I cannot marry Bois-Gilbert. Besides...' She buried her fingers in her sleeves, and took a deep breath. 'My-my choice is bestowed on another.'

There. It was said now. Perhaps the most terrifying thing Mirrum had ever said, but it had been fired into the air like a Tartar's arrow, and the strange singing in Mirrum's veins that had begun when she had savoured the feverish warmth of his hand rose to a pitch now.

Tiberias, at first, seemed to give no answer. One strange, spectral sigh seemed to rise from the shadows of his face, but at first it seemed too insubstantial to have possibly come from the snapping, wolf-like form of the Prince of Galilee.

Mirrum, however, was no longer uncertain. The sigh had told her much. It was as though the confusing mists in her mind had cleared at last – and, in the end, very inexperience made her wise. With one gentle hand she plucked at Tiberias, drawing him in turn, away from the light of the torches and into the more kindly darkness of the shadows; saying no more, for now. To rashly speak now, Mirrum divined, would be to shatter Raymond of Tripoli's dignity as well as his self-respect by noticing his pale face, the way his breathing came and went in subdued, strangled gasps. It was a serious sign of the Lord Marshal's agitation as it was, that he tamely followed where she led – almost as if barely able to string coherent thought together, let alone speech.

Tiberias battled against himself in vain. It was no use pretending that the whispering voices were not there; they came needling about the edge of his perception, pricking him, occasionally, with the same voice of conscience. That he was too old, that Mirrum would politely acquiesce out of fear of his power over her, rather than from any genuine feeling. But the strong, constrained tide of passion that had been sullen, quiet captive for too long roared defiance at inward reproach, and emerged as distraction – a strange thing in a man normally so controlled as the Lord of Tripoli. He could not have resisted Mirrum, even had he wanted to. There was electrifying sweetness in the fact that she had rejected the loutish Bois-Gilbert, and she had done it so roundly, without pause...

And _then _she had all but _accepted_...

Tiberias' inward agonies of the day seemed to release themselves, like a taut bowstring suddenly let fly. He dazedly let Mirrum take his sleeve; indeed, had she wished it, Mirrum could have hauled Tiberias over red-hot coals and he would have followed without a murmur.

She did _not_ lead the Lord of Tripoli over hot coals, as it happened. There was a cool sheltered seat of stone set into the cloister wall, where a gentle breeze fanned Mirrum's hectic cheeks and gave her a look of serious calm; a sort of virgin serenity, undisturbed by tumult or inward emotion. It was here that she chose to take her seat. Tiberias stared at her for a few moments, words hovering almost unchecked upon his lips, before he eventually took a seat at her side. The hem of his surcoat accidentally brushed Mirrum's dress as he sat down, causing the pale northern girl to flush as though an oven door had been opened in her face – but she continued to look at Tiberias quite steadily. As though anxiously weighing her words, what to say next. She had a distinct feeling that the faintly dazed, troubled look still clouding the strongly formed features of Raymond of Tripoli meant that he was hardly sure how to answer her.

That hardly mattered any more, to Mirrum. Perhaps, had she loved Tiberias a little less, she would have thought his silence a rebuffal, but the measure of his love was quite apparent in his agitation, the intent way he watched her face.

'You never gave me an opportunity to thank you, my lord,' she said timidly, looking down at the changeable sheen of her gown. It seemed to provide divine inspiration, for as she looked at it she remembered the clumsy stitching, the frail hands of that long-dead sister. She reached out almost impulsively for his other hand. 'Will you tell me of her? Your sister?'

'What?' That shocked Tiberias into speech. He looked at her with a rather different gaze to the stricken look of confused desire a few moments before. Tiberias suddenly relaxed, a quietly wondering look entering his dark eyes.

'How ever did you hear of poor Melisande? I thought there were precious few still alive who knew her name, let alone...' Tiberias leant back against the stone of the wall. 'Ay, my sister. Sybilla told you, no doubt?'

'She told me that you had a sister - who died,' Mirrum said hesitantly. 'But she did not tell me of the gowns, if that is what you mean. I... her embroidery spoke for itself. She embroidered her badge on to everything – every scrap of linen. I wondered...'

'Ay, poor wight.' A faint, sad note entered into Tiberias' voice. 'Thank you for that. I have heard many shuffle and hop about the Lord Marshal's _bastard_ sisterwith much courtly nicety, hardly daring to grant her the name of Tripoli.' A tang of bitterness soured his words for an instant, before lapsing into memory. 'Ay, and so she was, poor creature. That did not make her less _my_ sister...'

In her brother's memory, the long-dead maiden Melisande of Tripoli fluttered into life once more; a sad scrap of gently-born femininity, with huge mournful dark eyes. Poor Melisande, who had taken up little enough room in life – almost afraid to breathe, in case anyone remembered that she was a cuckoo in the nest...

But it is impossible to say anything of the sad shadow that was Tiberias' sister, without first giving a word to two to Hodierna of Tripoli, that dazzling gilded image of romance and song – who hid a core of stone beneath her golden reputation. One _might_ have said a Sybilla at first glance, with her love affairs, her jealous husband. But for the fact that where Sybilla would have fought a legion of noonday demons for her son had the taint of bastardy threatened him, Hodierna registered only a dismissive flicker of politic affection. Oh, Tiberias had nothing to complain of his mother for himself– she was a shrewd politician, and had taught him much. She was sharp enough to keep _him_ well, at least. But Melisande, the worthless girl, the sad, ever-breathing blot on her escutcheon – Hodierna somehow managed to slide the infamy of her birth on to the child herself, as though Melisande had begot herself from perverse spite. Melisande was so coffined by scoldings, reprimands, reproaches, yet so desperate for a word of approval, that she said little and looked up rarely – and even then, was often chided for looking melancholy.

After Tiberias came of age and wrested the reigns of Tripoli firmly from his mother's grasp, he did try, in his own, awkward way, to rescue Melisande. He spoke to her kindly, if with faint embarrassment – for Tiberias was a young man, and young men are not entirely used to matters of feminine tact, and did his best to suggest that to a husband, the old stain would not matter – that perhaps, in marriage, she might find a happier home than had previously been her lot, poor child...

It was, looking back now, Tiberias considered darkly, naive; a foolish, cruel hope to raise in a girl starved of love. Tiberias had as yet not been married himself, and strutting in his new-found power, considered Tripoli to be an emperor's pride.

After the failed affair of her almost-marriage – that old political game of hazard – Tiberias was prepared to try again, find, at the least, a kindly husband for her. But Melisande, for once in her short, sickly life, refused. She took only half of the dowry Tiberias would have given her to a convent, and there she sank down into a decline. She died as she had lived, struggling to muffle her existence in anonymity. The promise he had broken - that he could give her hope, happiness and love like some lordly magician in a French court - seemed to have struck her down like the first-born of Egypt when he could not keep his word...

Shortly after his marriage, Tiberias had thought – with some reluctance, of giving his sister's discarded gowns to Eschiva. It was the proper thing to do, to pass on the things of the past to that of the present. But his soul shrivelled at the thought of it. He could not bear the thought of giving Melisande's gowns to his... _wife_. Eschiva side-stepped any mention of his dead sister's name neatly, like a housewife daintily avoiding horse-dung in the road. It had occurred to him that it was hardly seemly to hoard them away, keep them jealously from the lady of the house– but it was the strong instinct of protection for poor sad Melisande that made him pause, keep them shrouded away. He did not want to lift the veil and expose her spirit to his... his _wife_'s private disdain, her clucking curiosity at the breath of scandal touching her husband's name.

It was curious perhaps, but with Mirrum he had felt no hesitancy, no fear at all. Melisande would have _liked_ Mirrum– indeed, had the poor child lived, Mirrum would have probably already been ensconced safe at Tripoli, teaching Melisande to laugh a little, playing games across that outlandish old heathen gaming board. It was a soft picture. Tiberias remembered with difficulty that Melisande would have been a grown woman now herself, nearly thirty – or perhaps more? Time eroded so many things.

But not, as it seemed, the desperate embroidery. Apparently Melisande had fought silently through her needlework, mutely triumphing over her mother's reproaches with every clumsily stitched badge.

Tiberias was oddly touched that it was Mirrum who had found this sad evidence of his sister's soul. There was an odd _balance_ to it – a striking, neat equilibrium that Mirrum _understood_, and asked nothing. A more sophisticated woman of the world would not have spoken her name, would have instead itched with blatant curiosity as though plagued by ants.

It was perhaps this simplicity which made Raymond of Tripoli respond in kind. Instead of the rather hesitant speech he had hastily constructed from odds and ends of Court fashion, like the trappings of a mummer's masque, he dropped all pretence and leant forward, staring long and deeply into Mirrum's wide grey eyes, one hand tenderly cupping the curve of her cheek.

'Child,' he said, very gently, 'Would you be very offended if I took you in my arms for a moment?'

For one moment Mirrum looked almost comically startled – a little flustered, as though she had been asked a question about some unfathomable text she had not finished. But then she seemed to take her courage in her two hands again, her cheeks blushing bright scarlet as she gave a half-shy glance to Tiberias, stammering 'N-no, not at all...' whilst looking half-frightened at her own audacity.

But Mirrum's boldness was as nothing. Why, the Lord Marshal had gathered her up as easily as though she really were a tired child someone had left behind and forgotten - pulled her into his arms as though it were quite natural for her to be there, after all!

Mirrum was not _quite_ sure how to respond, at first. It was an oddly disturbing sensation for her. It was somehow inexpressibly _good_ to simply be cradled there, feeling Tiberias' breath softly growl in his chest, simply being _held_. As far as she could remember, Mirrum had never been held by her father. Her mother had been dead long before Mirrum could have remembered her, and after all, her father had been a clerk. Whilst blithely at his ease in the realms of copying crabbed letters to crackling calfskin, had hardly been a demonstrative man. And, whilst Mirrum may have loved, with all the idolatrous, blind passion of a first love, the remote, blessed figure of the Physician... She had supposed, before she knew him for himself, when she still thought him a learned doctor, that perhaps they would meet at Court one day, and that there would have been an embrace – a fount of imagined rapture. But it felt vaguely impure to even think of such a thing now. The little contact that they had, such as might have been painted on a butterfly's wing, was hoarded safe in the shrine of Mirrum's heart, but it was already as insubstantial as a Lenten tide miracle. Death beatifies, and it had already changed the Physician into the divine. Unreachable. Untouchable by any mortal means.

But Tiberias... It felt so _safe_. Why, she could feel the dark velvet of his surcoat brush against her cheek as she leant (somewhat awkwardly, it must be said) against his shoulder.

And yet... and _yet_, there was a strange undercurrent of delicious danger that set Mirrum's body quivering – quite _why_, she could not tell. Why had she started to tremble? It was not cold. There was a faint breeze, true, but it was a warm, balmy night in Jerusalem – there was nothing for her to shiver for...

Tiberias did not speak for some time until he could trust his voice – his heart was too full. When a last he did, it was with a faintly cracked note of false gaiety, as of one vainly trying to relieve some unbearable solemnity.

'I suppose you must think me a veritable hypocrite,' he said, shifting Mirrum's weight slightly, 'With all my talk of being an incurable bachelor, scorning the trappings of court mistresses...' His laugh was slightly pained. 'Sybilla proves herself right at the last –you must suppose me a lecherous nobleman, after all.'

'Not at all!' Mirrum said indignantly, forgetting the momentary nervous quiver in her knees in her resentment at the implication. 'And may – may the saints forgive me for the disloyalty, but _Sybilla_ should not talk of lechery or _mistresses_ with a critical eye...'

Tiberias suddenly burst out into a fit of half-suppressed laughter at that. He could not help himself. 'Ay, I forgot you had been to 'Cana' with our noble Regent! You protest quite vehemently, little one...' he added, a softer note entering his voice. 'Are you so indignant for me?'

Mirrum lifted her head from his shoulder to fidget with a swathe of her coif that had come loose, not quite meeting the Lord of Tripoli's eye. She was quite certain if she looked full into his face she would lose her train of thought. The gentleness in Tiberias' voice was the strong beat of passion, and Mirrum was half-shy of it. 'I... I see a difference between Sybilla's manner of love, and...' Mirrum's voice trailed away, losing the thread of her words as though she had dropped a ball of wool in her confusion. She shook her head a little, trying to twitch that elusive strand of coherence to her . 'That is, Sybilla is reckless, and then she is unhappy...O-oh!'

Tiberias had suddenly arrested the hand nervously toying with the coif, softly extricating one stray fair curl from its linen confines. 'Your hair...' he said, almost absently.

Mirrum's coif, the intricate coils of linen disturbed, has slithered sadly to the floor, releasing a sadly somewhat frowsy braid – unlike Sybilla's dark, carefully oiled locks, Mirrum's hair always seemed to escape into a wild half-blown dandelion unruliness. The fair curls were escaping from their confines like pieces of mares'-tail caught on a fence, dispirited; clumsy attempts to emulate Audemande de Vinceaux's poise.

But, Mirrum realised, with a rush of wild elation, whilst Tiberias looked at her with eyes like that, she didn't care. She could have been dressed in stinging nettles from head to foot and she wouldn't have minded...

'I must confess,' Tiberias remarked, his voice grown hoarse again, 'That I little thought, the day your goodly Dame wandered to Jerusalem, that I should meet with such a wild, soft little thing as _you_. You were such an odd, chirruping little thing then – thoughtful, yes, but with such a pert bluntness – it would have knocked down a rider at full tilt...'He seemed to smile at the memory.

'I was arrogant, in my fashion,' Mirrum murmured, feeling an unutterable wave of withering contempt for that past Mirrum, who so played out her intellectual tricks like a circus pony, somersaulting like a spangled hobgoblin through Greek and Latin – a dry creature of parchment, but nothing more. 'I had grown so used to the Dame, I thought the whole world was fashioned like her – and, after all, she named me as I was, an ill-bred and slovenly byre-girl...'

'Nay, birdling!' The endearment sounded quite bewildering, coming from the Lord Marshal of Jerusalem. Indeed, Tiberias was so discomfited by the power of the words upon his lips that he sought to rid himself of them the only way he could – by pressing his lips to Mirrum's own, one hand reaching out to stroke her cheek as though gentling a startled horse.

He half-expected her to rear back, her maiden innocence alarmed. But Mirrum returned the kiss trembling, that enticing potential for the unknown making her bold, and put her arms about his neck with a sigh. When Tiberias at last released her, it was with an exultant glow upon his face.

'Nay,' he said at last. 'I say you were never a byre-girl, whatever any other says. And I should know your worth better than most, dearheart – I know you, pale child, better than you know yourself. Yes!' he repeated, strongly, as Mirrum broke apart, a word of protest on her lips. 'I _do_ know your soul better - better that you can dream.' A wild tide of words seemed to spill, unquenched from the Lord of Tripoli. It was as though an inner tide of constraint had finally flooded its banks. 'I _saw_! I saw how you won Sybilla's trust and her fast friendship. I saw how the boy cares for you– and I – I believe, girl-child, whilst I cared for you then – I did not know how truly I loved you until I saw how deeply you loved..._another_. ' Tiberias paused, swallowed harshly as he bit down on that word. '_Him_. You were good company for him, birdling, I could tell. Although I never saw aught but your farewell...'

Mirrum was shaken into immobility then, her cheeks waving scarlet pennants of shock; not unmingled with a little guilt. She had thought she had dared the whole court in that moment of ultimate defiance.

'So know this well, girl-child. A byre-girl could never win the hearts of so many to her,' Tiberias said quietly. 'And I would never woo any maid I thought a slovenly byre girl. As I do you.'

**NB: Hi everyone! So sorry for the fact this update has taken over a year – and thanks to Mercury Gray for the constant 'creative encouragement' (ie, ass-kicking) through laziness and supportive help through writer's block. Think of this as a belated Christmas present! This will probably enlighten my readers about why this update has taken so long: Number One, the author hates writing love scenes - she agonised a full six months over whether this was cheesy. Number Two, she's both lazy and a university student. I can't say when I'll next update, as this semester it's dissertation ahoy! But thanks to everyone for your reviews – they always loved and appreciated, even if I don't always reply...**


	44. Chapter 44

It seemed a moment quite suspended in time, that stolen seat in the cool cloister. Neither Mirrum, or Tiberias, it must be confessed, were eager to leave it – but the dim light that still lingered over the courtyard grew more and more sickly, until at last it faded entirely, and Tiberias could barely see the pale glow of Mirrum's hair resting against his shoulder in the shadows. He might as well have been clasping an unseen spirit in his arms; one of those shy, dryad-like creatures that supposedly lingered in the olive groves of old Greece. Yet a dryad would have been a mere trick of moonlight, made of little more than the whisper of the wind. She would not have clung quite so trustingly or so close in the dark, a warm weight suspended in his embrace, nor would she have pressed a soft, faintly feverish cheek quietly into the snug hollow of Tiberias' shoulder. It was a moment Tiberias would not have broken had he been offered the Holy Roman Empire as reward – and, indeed, for one moment he entertained a wild thought of pressing Mirrum closer, carrying her away from the distant shouts of increasingly raucous and drunken laughter that echoed from the hall. The music itself had become increasingly out of tune, the hautboys letting out ragged squeals that held no trace of tune. The feast must have long since spiralled into carousal; his squires would almost certainly be holding their own somewhere, giddy on the liberal dousing of Rhenish wine left from high table. There would be no-one to notice if the Lord of Tripoli took just a little – a very little – moment of sweet rapture for himself in the blissful dark of a Jerusalem night. Mirrum was a soft, willing weight in his arms, quite ready to give in to the fevered frenzy love brings...

It was an opportunity that would have utterly overwhelmed a far less impulsive man than Tiberias and, for a moment, the heat of his inward visions invisibly darted over Mirrum's form, already envisioning...

His arms tightened slightly about her, just once – and then a brief squall of drunken song broke the moment. Some fool man-at-arms, waving a flagon in one unsteady hand, was tottering down the steps ahead of them, blithely oblivious to the silent couple in the shadows, and carolling a slurred verse of some bawdy alehouse song. It destroyed Tiberias' impatient surge of desire as surely as though he had been doused with cold water. Not like this. Not some fumbling, furtive assignation mingled with the distant cries of drunken voices – it was unworthy of Mirrum and what she meant to him; and it would be doubly unworthy in _him _to take such an advantage. He would have remorselessly sneered such a wretched affair into the earth had it been some fool knight newly dubbed. In himself it would be... reprehensible. Such a thing should be in a time and place of a different sort. It must be said; although the less disinterested part of Tiberias howled in protest at this baulking of a desire that was still heated – he managed – somehow– to simply brush Mirrum's cheek with his lips, and gently release her from his arms.

'It grows dark,' he said, straining to keep his voice even. 'And the hour is late...'

Mirrum looked at him with over-wide grey eyes. She looked hardly awake; she seemed to have been plunged into some pleasant waking dream rather than reality for the last hour – but she recognised Tiberias' awkward dismissal for what it was; the uncomfortable awareness of mutual passion.

Mirrum found herself quite irrationally disappointed as she rose to her feet, even through the pink mist of happiness that surrounded her. She had hoped, in some obscure, half-conscious way, to finally learn the meaning of Sybilla's blissful dreams at Ibelin that night; the nature of what love truly _was._ She had half-longed –briefly, madly - to be seduced, almost as Tiberias had his own thoughts of impetuous seduction. But it was enough; and in truth Mirrum respected him the more for his consideration. It was a courtesy that precious few other men would have given. And he was right, of course. It would not do here or now. Even Sybilla's daring would have spurned a palace cloister for an _intrigue d'amor._

Tiberias' hand lingered warm, through the silk of her sleeve upon her arm. It was with a thrill of happiness that she covered – that she could _now_ cover - his hand with her own, as familiar equals. 'You are right,' she said, smiling a secret smile into the folds of her discarded coif as she bent to pick it from the dusty flags. 'I should retire. Alix will be dizzy with revelry...' She looked up, colourless eyes suddenly apprehensive. 'Will I...will we meet...' she paused, words drying up in her mouth. She was hardly sure how to ask whether she would see Tiberias again in this new, changed world...

Tiberias seemed to have anticipated her question; a faint, tender smile tugged briefly at his lips.

'Tush, I would hardly be without our games,' he said lightly. 'I am grown too used to the taxing of my wits. I shall be about Sybilla's errands for a while yet, but...' His dark eyes caught Mirrum's glance; that haunted, pleading look that had hunted her through her dreams. 'Come after dusk tomorrow,' he said softly, 'I am yours to command, then.'

Mirrum's fingers trembled perceptibly as he released her hand. She had just enough self-posession to make the correct, constrained obeisance in return to his own, straining her ears for the slight drag of Tiberias' firm tread as he turned back towards the raucous noise of the hall. And – because in some ways Mirrum was as hopping and childish a thing as she ever was - it was only once his footsteps had faded into the distance that she leapt to her feet and positively floated, in a happy glow, down the passageway, entirely forgetting the direction of her own chamber, her own feet occasionally dancing into a half-skipping step. The fears of the day seemed very remote now...

Mirrum's feet slowed, suddenly brought down from her rose-tinged surge of elation by the sobering realisation of _where_ she was. In her abstraction, she had taken the road she had always taken in the evenings – the old evenings – when it had been simply a matter of skirting the well-trodden passages of the palace and she had been only a walls' breadth away from...

The Physician. Mirrum's errant feet had taken her back to the garden.

The Physician's garden.

She had avoided it since their last... meeting. Somehow – it would have been too painful, knowing the fret-worked, exquisite sadness of the garden was now empty; a vacant space that was no longer haunted by the welcome shade who had given so generously to a dazed Saxon byre girl. But – Mirrum stared. What had become of that isolated spot of tardy greenery, locked away behind its intricately carved walls?

It had been cleared. The riotous tumble of browning weeds had been chastised into the severe, courtly shapes of a formal garden once more, for all it still drooped dispiritedly in Jerusalem's heat. Someone – probably Sybilla – had draped triumphant garlands of the same wilting blossoms that ornamented the banqueting table about the fretwork. The fountain was still as ungainly a lump of sandstone as it ever was, but instead of its usual turgid dribble, there was now the soft, liquid sound of running water. And, interrupting it, the sound of faint splashing.

A small, white-clad figure, that looked almost doll-sized in the dim evening light, was dabbling its hands tiredly in the water.

Mirrum smiled. Some things didn't change. Knowing little Prince Perseus as she did, he had probably insisted on being allowed to play in it _now_. It might still be the same to him, who knew?

But Mirrum, looking at the garish pennants and ridiculous, stupid dead flowers draped around the walls, found it strangely ghastly. It had a certain, haunting beauty in _being_ neglected. This sudden return to use and ornament left it looking almost ghastly – like a saint's day procession Mirrum had once seen in England, long ago. She had been held up – rare moment – by her father, because she had been too small to see over the heads of the crowd, and had got a fine view...

Of a withered, mummified hand, ugly and repulsive, the flesh withered over the bone, but draped in gaudily embroidered silk and scattered flower petals. The Physician's beautiful lost garden had been changed into a grinning skeleton of the past, decked in coronation baubles and attempting to caper like a mummer.

Mirrum hoped that wasn't an ill-omen, at least for poor Baldwin's sake...

Almost as if she'd called him by name little Prince Perseus' round face snapped up, breaking into a smile.

'Mirrum!'


	45. Chapter 45

Mirrum gave back an answering smile. The 'illustrious and most holy King Baldwin V' looked much happier freed of the confining coronation finery – although he seemed to have hopped straight out of bed in his nightshirt the minute he was put to bed. His new attendants would be led a merry dance, whoever they were. Little Prince Perseus had a will of his own and, from his rather spirited attempts to be imperious with the Bishop of Jerusalem, no little stock of courage, either. Baldwin stuck his tongue out at her, grinning with an impish manner that was anything but kingly. It had been a long and trying day, after all, and solemnity and ceremony had ruled most of it.

'_Maman_ gave me the garden, you see?' Prince Perseus looked around it with an air of ludicrously smug ownership. 'I can play here whenever I want, or have lessons – if I want them.'

'If you want them?'

'Only _if_ I want them.' Baldwin insisted, looking up at her, proudly. 'Kings don't have _lessons._'

'I think, my king, your _maman_ may think otherwise.'

'Oh.' Perseus' face fell. 'I don't mind if it's _Maman,_ though. _Maman_'s clever.' He added by way of self-consolation, tugging at Mirrum's hand. 'Come and play, Mirrum! _Maman_ gave me a wooden lion and he roars when you pull a string – look! I want to play Sir Yvain, and now I have a real actual _lion_...'

'Aren't you a little tired?' Mirrum said quietly, looking at Baldwin's small flushed face. For all his determined rushing about, the little child-king's footsteps were somewhat wavering – the last burst of excited energy before total exhaustion, if Mirrum was any judge.

'No! I'm not tired!' Baldwin protested, crossly, gathering up his treasured toy in both arms. The lion gaped its wooden maw at Mirrum, string dangling. 'I want to _play_! I want to, it's my garden! I'm _allowed_, now!'

Mirrum let herself be dragged over to the fountain – but she seated herself firmly on the lip of the basin and began humming abstractedly one of the gentler airs the musicians had played earlier. She had seen little Baldwin stubbornly determined to keep awake before; in a moment he would give in, and soon –

She had been right. Baldwin had flopped down next to the fountain, resting one small fair-haired head against her knee, though he still clasped the prized wooden lion fiercely to his thin chest.

'I don't want to do that again,' he said drowsily. 'I don't have to be crowned _again_, do I, Mirrum? Not another day?'

'What? No, no,' Mirrum said gently, stroking the tousled mop of hair. 'You don't have to be crowned again.'

'Because I did awf'lly well, just as _Maman_ said...' Baldwin yawned, hugely, before imperiously stretching out his arms. 'Carry me to bed, Mirrum!'

'I think,' Mirrum said tartly – although she shifted the weight of the small boy easily enough as he clambered into her lap– '_I_ think, that your gracious majesty is old enough to get into bed by himself. Don't you?'

'_Please_?' Baldwin's small flaxen head nodded heavily against her shoulder, eyelids screwed shut in a gauche child's imitation of sleep. He wasn't _really_ as tired as he was pretending to be, Mirrum guessed shrewdly – but there was no _Maman_ to rock him to sleep or sing him soft French airs whilst the banquet still went on, long into the early hours of the night. The poor little fledgling Baldwin V wanted comfort, which he hadn't found – and the thought of prince Perseus sat up alone in echoing royal apartments whilst his attendants feasted on the scraps in the kitchens made Mirrum soften like melted wax.

'Come on then,' she said softly, lifting him up. 'Up we go...'

'Up and up and up and up...' Baldwin said sleepily, in a sing-song voice. 'Up and up and –'

There was a wooden clunk as the lion nearly dropped out of his loosened grasp. Mirrum caught it nimbly, just in time –

Only to take a shocked indrawn breath at what she saw as she looked downwards.

'Prince Perseus! What _have_ you done to yourself?!'

The little prince's half-open palm was marked by a hideous blackened burn, the edges blistered and glistening unpleasantly.

'That?' Baldwin said blankly, looking down almost absently at it. 'I didn't cry,' he said, proudly.

'Did the _Lord Bishop_ punish you?!_'_

'_Him?'_ Baldwin sounded scornful. 'As though he could!' He dug his heels in a little, as though Mirrum were a stubborn pony. 'I want to go to _bed_, Mirrum.'

'Not until your hand is salved!' Mirrum snapped. 'Has your mother even _seen_ that? Have you been hiding it?'

Baldwin hid his face in the silk of Mirrum's gown, nothing but an errant tuft of fair hair peeking out. 'She'd have been cross,' he said, in a muffled voice. 'And it _was_ the ceremony today...'

Mirrum sighed, shifting her grip a little.

'We'll salve that,' she said firmly. '_Before_ you go to bed, and it is just possible, mark you, that your _Maman_ will not think to ask if she sees it...'

Baldwin went limp with relief.

'Th'nk you,' he said indistinctly, as Mirrum tottered unsteadily up the stairs towards his rooms. 'My nurse would have told _Maman_...'

'Your nurse would have been right,' Mirrum said absently, crossing the echoing floor. It was as she thought. Baldwin's new, splendid apartments were as empty as the grave, even the candles almost guttering out. She felt a pang of righteous indignation on the poor little king's part. She should speak to Sybilla about it. No matter what the feasting involved, no servant should have abandoned their young child-king for the promise of good Rhenish wine.

'Does she still keep her chest of salves beneath the window here? Yes? All right then, 'Mirrum commanded. 'Into bed with you, quick as lightning!'

Baldwin hopped nimbly beneath his trailing coverlet as Mirrum found a pot of sharp-smelling green paste, her nose wrinkling. Baldwin's nurse might be a sharp-elbowed sour specimen of woman, but she had tended a score of noble lordlings in her time, and she certainly knew her remedies for the various scrapes a small boy would stumble into, given the chance. And there was plenty of clean linen scraps...

How _did_ you poultice? Mirrum hadn't had much practice, but she generously spread a little of the paste over the bandage as though slapping butter on bread, before bandaging the cooling stuff around Baldwin's blistered palm. She had expected it to sting, but little Prince Perseus watched with interested detachment; mildly curious, but scarcely in _pain_ at all. Probably just as well, Mirrum thought tiredly to herself. He'd sleep the better without it...

'There,' she said, bringing the blanket a little closer over his thin shoulders. 'Sleep now. I'll put in a fresh candle, to burn until you're asleep...'

She shivered, suddenly. There was a cold breeze blowing through the window, in spite of the heat and noise from below...

And, unbidden, another image flashed before Mirrum's weary eyes – one that made her stop dead in her tracks and cast an anxious look back over her shoulder at that new child-king, curled up like a baby field-mouse in his covers. A swaying, dusty journey through the barren wastes near Kerak, on horseback, timidly clutching a ripped length of sleeve.

This wasn't the first hand of a king she'd tended, was it?

Mirrum had intended to go back to her own rooms once he was asleep, to rest from her own fatigue. But that uncanny thought made her sit down, suddenly, on the low stool near Baldwin's small bed, and anxiously watch the small pale face -until the candle spat hot wax on her hand and she started, setting it down abruptly on the table.

'Goodnight,' she called back, gently. Baldwin's pale golden eyelashes fluttered a little - but nothing more.

He was already fast asleep.

Mirrum wondered, even as she curled up beneath her new coverlet in her new rooms, whether she should have seen Sybilla about it. But _Sybilla_ would be in no mood to have heard her querulous concerns, as she had learnt well from watching Ammet and Sybilla's frequent furious outbursts. Especially _tonight,_ of all nights. Cast doubt on the golden promise of the coronation?

It _was_ better, Mirrum decided sleepily, far better to leave it to the morning, and sharper wits. There were new rules to the game of being a lady of property that had not applied to her as a maid. Besides - whether she liked the new-minted Lady Miriam of Montferrand or not, it was impossible to deny that her bed was very warm, and very soft...

Mirrum turned over with a contented sigh. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine the shape of the pillow was Tiberias' shoulder again...

She slept.

Perhaps the wilting garlands and browning greenery had let the memory of Dame Juliana's soft green fields and cold breezes slip in; for, to Mirrum's surprise, her dreams that night were not of the featureless forest she had scampered from so often – but of the rank smell of damp grass. The quiet ripple of a millpond, dark-green, mysterious and stagnant. A damp, mild English summer – with berries sharp spots of colour in the trees, and fruit ripening...

It was the crude picture in Dame Juliana's breviary of the Holy Land; a verdant Eden, brought to life. She was walking in a landscape of painted ink and gold-leaf, but with all the sounds and smells of home that she remembered so well...

Why wasn't she happy, then? Mirrum wondered uneasily, even in her dream. There seemed to be something not quite..._right_ about it. It was wrong when she looked at it, somehow – sliding away like a stone thrown in water. This wasn't how it should be...

She reached out a hand to the too-bright cherries, hanging from a branch –

And black, stinking things broke off in her hand, oozing a putrid liquid that made her snatch away her hand in disgust. The grass became a seething mass of grave-worms writhing vilely beneath her feet. She stumbled, and with horror realised she was tumbling towards them, hands outstretched.

'Sweet Virgin, _no_!'

Mirrum woke in a fright, panting for breath.

'M'lady?'

Alix's distinctly drowsy voice rose from the floor, where her pallet was stretched across the chamber door.

All was quiet. There were no grave-worms – simply sweat-drenched folds of her shift sticking to her in the heat of the night. No rotting berries, either. Just the clammy palms of her hands, folded into tight fists.

'I- nothing,' Mirrum said hastily. 'A dream. It's over, now.'

She flung herself back against the pillow, pressing her burning face against the cool edge of the linen. Was it over?

Mirrum had not had a dream so vivid since the old dream of the bear, hunting her through the forest – and even she could read that one clearly; her own, scarcely acknowledged feelings for the Lord Tiberias, pushing their way to the fore.

Could it be the _Physician_ trying to tell her something, she wondered, uneasily. She had not been able to wish him into existence since she had seen him in the uncertain days before the coronation. Perhaps the dead _could_ warn through dreams and portents, after all?

Mirrum screwed up her eyes in the grey darkness – trying to will the Physician into being. _Are you there?_ She asked, inside her head. _Dear King, was that you?_

A pause. But only silence answered her. No grey-blue eyes swirled into existence, no kindly, gentle face.

Perhaps it _was _just that; a dream, after all.

Mirrum turned over, already watching the moonlight falling across one painted wall blur as her eyes closed again, already half-asleep.

When she woke in the morning, she had forgotten about it altogether. Bad dreams rarely linger long when we are happy – and Mirrum was happy; happier than she had dared to believe possible as a colourless byre girl from Malmesbury.

Nonetheless, no day had ever seemed so long, or so tiresome – or so _dull_. She had tried to keep herself busy; she had begun repairing some of the faded embroidery of the hangings – reviving broken or trailing threads with new woollen stitches. Alix, deft - and a little unscrupulous, as always – had purloined some lady's silks from somewhere for Mirrum to work with. She strongly suspected Pasque de Rivera would be missing a few colours when she came next to her tapestry – but Alix had solemnly declared that they wouldn't be missed - and it made the day fly by a little faster. It brought the evening with Tiberias a little closer...

Mirrum's cheeks coloured as she bent her head over her needlework, fingers trembling slightly. She shouldn't be thinking of _that_. The dutiful side of Mirrum protested against the surge of queasy excitement (and not a little trepidation) that came from thinking too much.

'Are you well, madam?' Alix had been watching Mirrum narrowly across the room, her own sewing idle in her lap. 'Your face is flushed; do you feel sick?'

'No,' Mirrum said quickly, pulling her thread severely taut. 'I'm well. I'm very well – agh!'

She had jabbed the sharp bone needle into her thumb without looking.

'Perhaps you need a change of air,' Alix suggested, as Mirrum sucked ruefully at her injured thumb. 'You've not stirred all day, and you dined heavily yesterday...' She paused, carefully.

'Or... perhaps you need quiet today?'

Mirrum should have known from her own experience that little escapes a waiting maid. She looked up from her lap to see Alix looking at her with a gaze that said she knew _exactly_ what made her mistress fidget in her chair and pluck fretfully at her embroidery.

'I-' Mirrum opened her mouth to protest, utter a heated denial – only one look at her maid's knowing glance made her stop short. It was stupid to lie. And there wasn't contempt in Alix's eyes. If anything, there was actually a little understanding.

'I-' Mirrum lowered her eyes.

'You can ask,' Alix said matter-of-factly. 'I wasn't lady to Pasque de Rivera for nothing, I can tell you. I know – aha, _enough_.' She eyed Mirrum cautiously. 'You understand how it works?'

Mirrum's face went crimson.

''nk so,' she muttered, wishing the floor would swallow her up.

'My lady?' Alix leant forward, peering at her face

'I think so!' Mirrum said, more loudly. 'I've read... I've read tales! Some of the chronicles...'

Indeed, some books (often written by monks to boot) had provided some rather lewd descriptions of precisely _what_ carnalities to avoid. Mirrum had emerged with the uneasy impression that most of the writers were either much like the Lord Patriarch - or sincerely _wished_ they were. But that seemed _nothing _to do with her own feelings for Raymond of Tripoli. It sounded vaguely nauseous, from what Mirrum had discovered, like raw meat spoiling under a hot sun.

But this disclosure seemed to restore Alix's confidence in her mistress' intellect; she looked visibly relieved. 'You're tolerably well off, then,' she said, relaxing. 'Some maids have hardly _any_ idea what to expect.' She eyed Mirrum narrowly. 'Are you frightened?'

'_What!?_'

'Some girls are,' Alix said soothingly. 'It's all right to admit it-'

'No,' Mirrum said hastily. 'I'm _not.' _She rocked back and forth, head bent over her stitching. Thinking.

Yes – there had been the painted tales; some of the more earthy romances favoured by Dame Juliana. But when Mirrum thought of love, she remembered Sybilla at Cana. She was no longer a bright, brittle creature, stretched almost to breaking point by politics and the affairs of state. She had become human. And _happy_ , for once – yes, happy! A person who could laugh, like other women.

And Aude – Audemande de Vinceaux too, now she thought about it. Mirrum remembered that silent, playful contest of glances across the coronation banquet, the quiet brown-haired _chanteuse _ and her flaxen-haired knight exchanging looks that spoke love.

To be scared of something that seemed so beautiful? No! If anything – Mirrum hesitated, remembering the hollow, pleading dark eyes of the dream-bear that had stalked her nights so persistently. If anything, she was a little afraid of disappointing Tiberias. What if she wasn't all he wanted? What if –

No. Mirrum thought proudly, sitting a little straighter in her chair. I'm Miriam of _Montferrand_ now. Miriam of Montferrand _is_ worthy.

The last flickering of little, indecisive Miriam of Malmesbury died there. Mirrum was learning the independence of a freedwoman at last.

'Thank you,' she said to Alix. 'I think I know...enough. But-' Mirrum blushed pinkly as she glanced over at the horizon. The sun was just beginning to set in a dark red sky. 'Will you – help me get ready?'

The colour of love, Mirrum decided, must be flame - for it was what Alix chose without a second thought. First, a pale shift– linen so white and fine it was not unlike wearing a soul, stitched neatly into a shape. And then, a huge open robe of thick orange velvet that trailed along the ground – more suited for an English winter than a stifling evening in Palestine. It was a peculiar burnt shade; not something Mirrum would have chosen for herself.

Alix was firm on the colour.

'It suits you,' she said decidedly, brushing a speck of invisible dust from the sleeve. 'You should see – with your hair loose, you'll look...Oh a pity you don't have a silvered glass, like the Queen Regent, my lady! You'd be able to see how well you look...'

Mirrum twisted a curl round her finger nervously, not saying a word. Her fit of nerves had got the better of her again – but she nodded, and then lifted up her finery with nail-bitten hands to go.

'My lady!'

'Yes?'

Alix tilted her head shrewdly to one side, eyes appraising. 'Your lord is a lucky man.' She said, bobbing into a mock-curtsey as she shut the door. 'Dream well.'

The echoing cloisters of the palace of Jerusalem had never seemed so daunting as they did that night. Truth be told, Mirrum was a little nervous at losing her way. The old games of chess and chance conversation had taken place in the official chambers of the Lord Marshal. Seeing Tiberias in the bear's den, so to speak – was something new.

She knocked, hesitantly.

'Come!' Tiberias' voice said from within. There was a sudden loud clang, as though something heavy and metallic had dropped to the floor – and muffled cursing. 'God's blood! Damn the blasted...'

Mirrum opened the door. A puddle of sticky red Anjou had pooled hopelessly on the stone flags near her bare feet. Tiberias had evidently been arranging a flagon of wine by the chairs set before the fire - and had knocked it over at her tap on the door.

The Lord of Tripoli was currently on his hands and knees, glumly picking up fragments of wine soaked blue-green glass. A goblet had smashed on the tiles.

'Damn the gaudy Venetian bauble!' he muttered. 'Don't bother to spill the small ale, oh no – spill the fine stuff all about the place, just before –'

Mirrum dodged the wine trail.

'It's not so bad,' she said, consolingly, squatting down upon a dry patch of hearthstone. 'You only spilt it on flagstones, my lord. It can be scrubbed away.'

'Ay, but...' Tiberias looked up and started, as though seeing Mirrum for the first time – orange robe pooled about her knees, long strands of pale curling hair falling loose over her face.

'My stars...' He breathed. He looked at her – a long, dark-eyed look that reminded Mirrum of the heated moments in the cloister, at the coronation feast. No trace of the amused tolerance for a pale 'child' evident in the lord of Tripoli's face now. The gaze he cast at Mirrum now was a peculiar mix of esteem, desire, and hesitant tenderness. He stayed on his knees, a grizzled old soldier paying a stunned, simple homage to youth and beauty.

'You are very beautiful.' He said simply, making no effort to rise.

Mirrum felt the heat rise to her face. She had never had to accept compliments to her beauty before – and what he had said with his eyes alone moved her more than she could say. She dodged around it, instead.

'I am sorry if I made you spill your wine -'

'Oh, that!' Tiberias waved that aside impatiently, rising to his knees with a slight wince. 'My own folly. I told my squires I could make shift for myself, and broke every piece of tableware accordingly...'

Mirrum helped him to his feet, pushing herself under his shoulder as he got up. 'You shouldn't kneel,' she said reprovingly, glancing at the right leg, which Tiberias always dragged. 'Not when-'

'Not when I am a creaky old ship, eh?' Tiberias' arm pressed Mirrum's waist gently. 'Enough of that,' he said suddenly, gesturing towards the fire. 'You are my guest.'

The Lord of Tripoli's rooms, truth be told, were almost as Spartan as a mendicant friar's. Short of a great carved bed that had probably held many a Lord of Tripoli before him, there was little enough to say this room was even a nobleman's. Bare, crumbling plaster walls, with no coverings or tapestries. A large stone fireplace that seemed in need of a good sweeping, for it sprinkled soot and ash on to the fire like a bizarre form of libation. The sole comforts in the room, such as they were, had been huddled up before the fire; two rigidly carved chairs and the unlucky side table on a worn hearthrug. There was a carefully arranged fur mantle spread over one chair. Mirrum had a sneaking suspicion Tiberias had ransacked his brains as well as his winter coffers in his efforts to put her at her ease.

Though she refused the fur mantle.

'As though I'm going to take that!' she protested, looking at the rich fur and thick lined velvet. 'I'm full warm enough – and you on your hands and knees on a cold stone floor, too!' She took Tiberias by the hand. 'Sit down, sirrah!' she said with as much sternness as she could have mustered with Prince Perseus.

The soft, dark-eyed heat rose to Tiberias' eyes again. He sat, true – but as he did he scooped Mirrum up, trailing robe and all, into a powerful embrace not entirely unlike the dark-furred bear of her dreams, her bare feet not even touching the ground.

They simply sat in a warm fug of happiness watching the flames flicker in the grate – and no longer pleasantly arguing over who had the mantle, for Tiberias had twitched it over his knees to cover Mirrum's feet.

'Just ale, after all,' he remarked ruefully, stretching one hand towards the sturdy flagon of table ale that had survived the upset. 'You'll have but a poor, miserly idea of my housekeeping...'

Mirrum snorted. 'Housekeeping?'

'You'd be surprised, lady,' Tiberias retorted mildly, enjoying the verbal jousting of wit. 'I am a man of many parts. Man cannot live on small ale alone ...'

He passed Mirrum a cup - spiced ale, warm and inviting. Mirrum sipped it gratefully, her eyebrows crinkling in sudden appreciation. Whatever Tiberias' neglect of his rooms might be, his cellars were certainly well-supplied.

Tiberias laughed at her expression. 'It's to your liking?'

'It tastes like Christmas,' Mirrum said, resting her head against his shoulder. 'Christmas at home...'

'Ah,' the lord of Tripoli said wisely. 'That will be the cloves.'

Mirrum sighed. She could hear the dull comforting beat of his heart beneath his tunic when she turned closer, feel the heat of his skin through the velvet. It was a good feeling. The chronicles hadn't prepared her for how good it felt to be held by someone kindly – not boastful, or brutish, or trying to bed a coffer of silver. Tiberias had loved her when she had nothing but ink-stained fingers and a linen shift to her name...

'Mirrum -' Tiberias said, somewhere distantly above her head.

'Mmm?' The warmth of the fire and spiced wine was lulling Mirrum into a pleasant torpor. She hadn't noticed that Tiberias' hands were quivering convulsively under her soft trusting weight, or that his eyes had glazed over with that far-away glow from the night of the banquet. It was only when he stooped his head towards her with a strange hesitancy that she saw – and understood. The dark light in Tiberias' eyes reflected back two miniature Mirrums in orange velvet as though in bud. She reached up a hand to touch his grizzled cheek.

'Yes,' she said simply.

The rest of that night seemed like a delirious fever-dream; scarcely real – a dim mirage of disturbing intensity that flickered in and out of focus.

Mirrum was only dimly aware that her mantle had slipped into a crushed puddle of orange velvet on the floor at her feet as Tiberias led her, wordless and breathing hard, towards the dark shadows of the canopied bed.

Both, man and maiden alike, were almost tripping in their sudden, urgent haste – arms clasped confusedly about the other. They could hardly stop touching each other; his hands were passing quivering over her cheek, her throat – clinging, desperate...

It was done. The bear and the maiden, running through the forest, had met at last – and the consummation was not that of predator and prey. One the contrary, the sharp, sweet joy of the embrace stole the rags of Mirrum's childhood away with the choked sighs in the dark.

There was one moment of uncertainty between the two – and one only. Tiberias had hesitated almost at the last moment, tensing to look almost fearfully into Mirrum's eyes – afraid perhaps that she would flinch away. A terror that this – all this - would suddenly melt away, and cold, undemonstrative Eschiva suddenly slide into Mirrum's place.

But Mirrum's mist-grey eyes didn't change – and her arms, clutched about him, tightened, drawing him down to her again.

'Yes,' she whispered, against his forehead. 'Oh, yes...'

And the rest of the world – and indeed, all of Jerusalem – briefly seemed to disappear.


End file.
